I have defended Edelman's work for Wal-Mart's online reputation, but this latest online effort from Wal-Mart Watch points to sloppiness.

Wal-Mart Watch, the Union-funded anti-Wal-Mart pressure group, launched workingfamiliesforwalmart.com- a spoof site of the much-covered "Working Families for Wal-Mart" activist group.

This morning I got Wal-Mart Watch's email, and clicked over to the site I thought was WorkingFamiliesforWalMart- whose url is http://www.forwalmart.com/

To my surprise, the Wal-Mart Watch site is an exact match- except it's a spoof site with negative Wal-Mart messaging. This is kind of a lame blow for Wal-Mart Watch, a stunt akin to those strange web apps that "Jesusfied" any web page a few years ago. I'm sure the folks at Wal-Mart were expecting something like this, as it's a common negative political tactic, but it's damn uncanny for us laypeople.

Nonetheless...

Online PR lesson of the day: always buy every possible iteration of your site's url, as it can, and will, come back to bite you.