Yesterday I posted about Walmart’s ill conceived decision to sponsor a cute game that featured an Iams product placement on I Can Has Cheez Burger. While the response is not equal to the epic fail of Walmart’s Facebook page, the comments are getting close.
Here’s what I think happened.
Iams created a game as a funny tie-in [...]

… does whatever a smiley can he feckin’ wants. Jack Neff at Ad Age is clearly enamored with Walmart online. And just as clearly, Jack hasn’t taken a long look at the consistent way Walmart stumbles about in cyber space like a superhero with a cattle prod up his bum.
On Monday Jack wrote:
There aren’t too [...]

Last week reader and Wal-Mart corporate employee Holly J took me to task for not writing about the good actions Wal-Mart takes. I said that the good news is the responsibility of Wal-Mart and the flacks at Edelman.
But today I came across a good story about Wal-Mart and guess what Holly? There’s nothing from either [...]

First they send out a memo to willing patsies in the media. One of them, Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, copies the memo almost verbatim; then they send the link for her column to conservative bloggers just begging for a chance to bash Wal-Mart bashers.
John Ruberry is a nice guy (and an [...]

It looks like Edelman is sending out talking points again. This is Katherine Kersten, local columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Wal-Mart’s more than 1.3 million American employees aren’t stupid. The company’s wages and fringe benefits — including health care coverage and retirement benefits — are comparable to those of other retailers, according to a [...]

Many props to the nice folks at Edelman for actually posting my carbon labeling question on Rand Waddoups’ local food post over at Check Out. Many more props will go to Rand if he actually answers it directly. The rest of this post will be devoted to why I doubt he will.
Looking back [...]

If you have young children like I do, the only movies you get to see in the movieplex are cartoons. Therefore, I was already kind of psyched to see Pixar’s WALL-E. I mean it has to be better than “Horton Hears a Who,” right? Little did I know.
This is from the MSNBC [...]

Cigars and brandies all around for the folks at Edelman. The effusiveness of the recent Wal-Mart love fest leads me to believe that only two possible tasks remain for the public relations firm responsible before it rides off into the sunset, its job here done.
Either President George Bush, in imitation of Charles II, dismisses Congress [...]

I’m thinking that the poor Edelman drudge assigned to deal with Deborah Shank is about this close to going over the edge. The story, as they say in Flack World, has serious legs and it’s not going away. This is exactly what I tried to communicate with Liz Fuller.
Corporations have no souls because they’re not [...]

Video: Philip DeFranco is not happy about Wal-Mart’s treatment of Debbie Shank…

Paging Edelman. Here’s a Wal-Mart PR disaster in the making:
Wal-Mart’s mugging of the Easter Bunny is finally getting a little attention. It’s about time.
Does Wal-Mart care? I saw that commercial again when I was in the gym this morning so the answer to that question is obviously “no.” We’re up to [...]

Wal-Mart Watch has dug up Wal-Mart’s Internet policy and it’s not looking good for the folks at Check Out. From the memo:
Associates must not make statements or post items that negatively impact on Wal-Mart’s reputation and/or that are derogatory or defamatory to any Wal-Mart Associate, customer or supplier.
To which Wal-Mart Watch responds:
Checkout has brought [...]

This one is not really about Check Out, it just starts there and goes much further. Apparently, Edelman has some kind of initiative designed to make everything it does “authentic.” But as Heather Yaxley rightfully points out:
Who could argue with an aim of mastery or authority? If PR is to be respected, [...]

Originally, I had planned to use this space today to take a very close look at the NYT story on Check Out which I first saw last night. However, having now read Gawker’s take on the same story I feel that anything I write would so pale in comparison that I should just keep [...]

As a follow up to my earlier post today, here’s more on Edelman from Gawker. If anything I link to from here belongs in the category of “must read the whole thing,” this is it.