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A Matter of Trust? Edelman's Walmart blog manufactured writers AND readers
by Marianne Richmond

Other Bloghers have eloquently weighed in about the Wal-Mart/Edelman ethics issue. Liz Thompson,HeatherB, and Pam all wrote great posts and there have been lots of comments.

But now, there is more news. In chronological order, first there was the "outing" which included Wal-Mart as well as their PR Agency, Edelman.
This was followed by the "silence"; then the Edelman apology which included the requisite acceptance of responsibility and promise to "do
better."

I believe something was said about efforts to ensure that all Edelman employees would be trained in the "code"....could this have been an explanation for where the "unsupervised"  summer intern who was blamed for leaving an "anonymous" comment on Jeff Jarvis' blog continued his career after his "lapse" adversely effected his client, Dell's entry into blogging? In other words, was Edelman blaming inexperienced junior staff for this? The intern strikes again.

Even though this was the second public disclosure lapse involving Edelman and Wal-Mart, for the most part, the blogosphere was empathetic and forgiving. I found this more than a little surprising.

WOMMA while acknowledging that Edelman clearly violated the WOMMA Code of Ethics, said
that based upon Edelman's public announcement aw well as private meetings that they had with Edelman, that "We are assured by Edelman
management's public actions to accept full
responsibility, pledge to make certain that the error will not be repeated, and again endorse the WOMMA Ethics Code."

However, yesterday Edelman revealed that there were more "lapses." MediaPost reported that "Until the new disclosures, both blogs appeared to have been created and contributed to by independent supporters of the big box retailer, an Edelman client.

One blog appears on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, the allegedly grassroots advocacy group formed by Edelman last December,
which is "committed to fostering open and honest dialogue...that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families."

The second blog is on WFWM's subsidiary site Paid Critics.

The Paid Critics blog is devoted to "exposing" links between unions and other vested interests that are "smearing Wal-Mart" through the media.
Until yesterday, blog entries on both WFWM and Paid Critics were uncredited. Thursday, bylines were added to blog posts "in response to
comments and emails."

As a result of the new transparency, every entry on the blogs is now credited to one of three contributors: Miranda, Brian or Kate. A click on these single monikers reveals biographies of Edelman employees Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall, whose clients include
Working Families for Wal-Mart, the sites say." Are these the Edelman employees that are "responsible" for this mess?

OK, so it is duly noted that Edelman
apparently disclosed this voluntarily. Today,  on Richard Edelman's blog, Richard announced that steps were being taken to to ensure that all Edelman  employees, around the world, are aware of, educated in and understand something that I thought Edelman communicated that he and his firm STOOD for: TRUST.

Wouldn't one have thought that the firm who has published the Edelman Trust Barometer,
year after year, headed by someone who gives presentations
applauding his firm's long term success as a pillar of trust, authenticity, transparency would already be training his own employees?

Shouldn't we expect someone who wrote,
"In short, we want to persuade our corporate clients to commit to the blogosphere... to allow employees to be the first line of credible offense for corporate initiatives, to reach out to stakeholders such as NGOs and to co-create the brand story and corporate reputation with informed and passionate on-line participants" would have training HIS employees first? Not after the mess up {s}?

One would think that  the founder of the "me2revolution" would have already trained his foot soldiers in the culture of blogs.

"Apparently no one trained Laura in the culture of blogs. Or clued her into the fact that blogs are more than "diaries" but the building blocks of an extended real online social community" as noted by Toby at Diva Marketing.Laura is one of the Wal-mart accross America crew.

Andy Sernovitz of WOMMA says in AdAge that,
"The complexity of all this social media is that it doesn't have the
controls of traditional marketing." I think he means that social media
doesn't have the FTC; that is true. PR,  as a dis- intermediated media
is not a new concept though.

BL Ochman is singing "Liar Liar pants on fire" and calling for Edelman to be thrown out of WOMMA. Andy Sernovitz says that WOMMAis not the police. In fact, the WOMMA ethics code says, "This is a code that WOMMA members choose to live by. We hope all ethical marketers will do the same."

I think some people should be encouraged to make
some better choices. This kind of "lapse" erodes trust....not just
trust that clients have in Edelman or even PR or ad agencies or
consultants.

 It erodes trust in what is the very heart of
social media and the culture of blogs; that the "people like us" who are writing those blogs are
who they say they are and are telling us the truth.

I think the "theme"song for this is not "liar liar" but "A
Matter of Trust" from Billy Joel.

"Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began with a passionate start
And they may not want it to end
But it will, it's just a question of when
I've lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned
But that won't happen to us
Cause it's always been a matter of trust"

Marianne Richmond also blogs at Resonance Partnership

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Submitted by Marianne Richmond (view blog) on Fri, 10/20/2006 - 5:12pm

Comments

 

Right- O

Great post. I'm big on disclosure; I was a journalism major and made my living as a reporter several years before blogging. Blogs are the new penny presses; it was only a matter of time before corporate tried to pollute it. In the end all we have is our word!

Dana
Mamalogues.com
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pop Mama
Since Eve

Submitted by Dana Loesch on Fri, 10/20/2006 - 20:10
 

Penny Press

Great analogy.

Go Cards!

Marianne Richmond
resonancepartnership

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Fri, 10/20/2006 - 23:27
 

Stomping on Journo Ethics--and Who Values
Conversation Skills?

Hi Marianne,

Great post! to add to what you've said:

one thing that lots of the marketing bloggers aren't looking at,perhaps didn't see, and journalists aren't talking about, is that the "Jim" in the Wal-Mart blog is Jim Thresher, a 25-year vet photojournalist for the Washington Post. Shortly after the BusinessWeek article came out, there was a piece in Editor and Publisher that revealed his connection with the WaPo. Larry Downey, Jr. of WaPo re-stated their position re their "freelancers" (which is how they see all their staff reporters): that they cannont work for a competitor nor for a special interest while working for WaPo.

Thresher was asked to remove his photos from the Wal-Mart blog and to pay back what he took from the special interest (see this for a quick synopsis.

Thresher says what he did was to protect his employer--it was more like protecting himself because he was playing both ends against the middle. He should have known better from the beginning, and should not have let Laura take the fall for everything that happened.

But lots of bigtime, and smalltime, journalists have made some amazing faux pas in the past six months (Michael Hiltzick of L.A. Times, Lee Siegel of Nat. Review, and some small journos who were just fired outright) Journalists are having just as rough a time understanding the blogosphere as the marketers. And for the same reasons...

I think, though, I can forward a supposition why the problems keep happening: simply that there are many in both journalism and marketing that think they have the blogosphere all figured out from reading just the right books and talking to some myspace addicts. Right now, there's a glut of "experts" on blogging writing copious articles for copious publications. Funny thing is, some of those experts are just really good researchers and white paper writers who do not have adequate experience either in online communication or in the blogosphere.

Subsequently, many companies make big mistakes with their blogs--the mistakes can range from huge boo-boos like Edelman, or it can be simply creating blogs that sort of sit there like blobs in the blogosphere with no blogrolls, no links, no interaction at all. Many journalists make the boo-boo of sock puppetry, forum flaming, or faux blogging.

But do you think they'd ask any of us who really know this place what to do? Often, they go to very young people because the hype tells them very young people know what to do out here, when they should be coming to some of us Veterans who've been using social media for many, many years (sometimes from its earliest days--I'm talking the days of listserves) I don't think, though, that the social skills one gains out here are as valued as they should be. After all, we're just users-- it's not like we're writing code for new widgets ;-)

Tish Grier
Editor, Corante Media Hub
Blogging at: The Constant Observer and
Love&Hope&Sex&Dreams

Submitted by Tish G on Sun, 10/22/2006 - 07:59
 

Can't tell the Players Without a Scorecard

(Sorry...but we are a little baseball obsessed around St. Louis right now)

Tish,

Thanks for your additions to "To Tell The Truth" sponsored by Wal-Mart and produced by Edelman.

Will the real bloggers please stand up??

You make some great points...there is enough irony in this one to go around many times.

One addtional irony is that Wal-mart is probably tarred the least in this...People expect Wal-mart's prices to be low and have low expectations of them in the ethical standards aisle also.

Time will tell what the impact of all this will be on expectations that people will have for bloggers in the future....

Marianne

Marianne Richmond
resonancepartnership

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Sun, 10/22/2006 - 11:35
 

Thanks for the shout out

This whole thing still drives me crazy. I just don't understand what Edelman thought they would get out of lying. My whole point was that if you're going to start a blog to help your business look fantastic, than admit to doing so. With this 'new' medium, it's not like it's that big of a deal, just own up to it.

And as Mamalogues said, the corporate world is now trying to 'pollute' blogging for their own advantage. It's just crazy how far this has all progressed.

and RE: the cards, well baseball season was over weeks ago for me, but we'll (yankees fans) always have the AL East.

Heather B.
Personal Blog: No Pasa Nada
BlogHer CE: Business, Career & Personal Finance

Submitted by HeatherB on Sun, 10/22/2006 - 18:30
 

The cartoon, Miranda, and the Wal-Mart blogs

Marianne-

I wrote about this at my blog, womenandwork.org, and on BlogHer. I hired Miranda Grill when I was at Edelman- she's a junior employee. She did what she had to. The combination of a massive client like Wal-Mart and the rush that you're pioneering new stuff leads to overstepping and doing stupid things. Obviously, management was to blame but this is more a symptom of growing a new type of media, I think, than a deliberate act of ill will. I welcome your arguments though!

Submitted by Morra Aarons Mele on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 06:46
 

More a Learning Experience than A Polluting
One

Marianne--enjoy the World Series excitement while you can :-)

One problem that companies have is lots of experts who read about the Internet, but have no practical experience of what it is as a subculture

They're not going to understand it the way some of us do (my roots go back to rave culture of the early 90's. the genesis of WOMM) because it's not something one can pick up overnight by reading A-listers. You have to get into the LongTail and be social...

I don't think what happened was a premeditated act of will either--but a series of unfortunate coincidences combined with underestimating life in the blogopshere.

I don't think the corporate world is trying to pollute the blogosphere any more than political action groups or pornographers. This is a big place. Stuff happens. You'd be surprised how many bloggers (and regular folks) don't know lots of stuff that happens in here (nor do they care.)
After all, we learn our best lessons from the mistakes of others.

Tish Grier
Editor, Corante Media Hub
Blogging at: The Constant Observer and
Love&Hope&Sex&Dreams

Submitted by Tish G on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 12:33
 

Well, I agree about the

Well, I agree about the culture of blogs issue and I don't really think there is a conspiracy to polute but I do think this was more than just "mistakes happen"

Check out the post by Suw Charman at Corante...it was quite interesting, and Edelmans's comments even more so....especially in light of not getting the culture or just not really "getting" it. Also, Edelman kind of contradicts some of his other backpedaling and says it was a "publicity stunt" after all!

Marianne

Submitted by Marianne Richmond on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 00:23