EDELMAN FESS’S UP ON TWO MORE FLOGS…
No working families and no anti-paid critics. Mega public relations firm Edelman has caved in under the relentless pressure of bloggers and admitted that both Working Families For Wal Mart and Paid Critics blogs are fakes.
From Online Media Dailey:
Public relations firm Edelman, which last week pledged to be more transparent in its involvement with client-related blogs, Thursday revealed it is behind two more ‘flogs,’ or fake blogs, created on behalf of Wal-Mart.
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 big question now has to be: can anyone trust anything coming out of Edelman now? For the No. 1 PR firm and champion of the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association’s Code of Ethics to get caught with not one but three flogs would be like discovering that the nation’s largest retailer was well, uh never mind.
PR professionals are running away from Edelman now like Republicans from Mark Foley.
“Doesn’t anybody at Edelman see the irony behind having their own paid critics writing Wal-Mart’s Paid Critics blog?” asks Sean Carton, a blogger, author of eight books about technology and the Internet, and chief strategy officer for Baltimore interactive consultancy idfive. “This was a brilliant idea, in its way, but it was evil and they got caught. It was old media thinking in the new media world, and you can’t get away with that [stuff] anymore.”
I think we need a Wal Of Shame and I nominate Richard Edelman as it’s first dishonoree.