Who wants to be Dorothy?
The same Fort Wayne Journal Gazette article I linked to earlier has another quote that I think is worth considering for a while:
“Working Families for Wal-Mart is not a lobbying group or a 501(c)3 (non-profit), but is a sock-puppet for Edelman, Wal-Mart’s public relations firm, purporting to represent real American families but spouting Edelman rhetoric,†Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Joy Bernstein said in an e-mailed statement.
I’m assuming Wal-Mart Watch checked that out before they wrote it. This in turn begs the question, if Working Families for Wal-Mart isn’t a lobbying group or a non-profit, what exactly are they? Sock-puppet is not the description that Working Families for Wal-Mart gives of itself on its web site:
Working Families for Wal-Mart is committed to fostering open and honest dialogue with elected officials, opinion makers and community leaders that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families.
This comes under a section entitled “Our Mission,” but that’s not very specific, is it? To paraphrase the legendary Richard Scarry, what exactly do these people do all day? And do they bill by the hour?
The answer to that first question is they write blog posts and issue press releases. But these functions aren’t even done by Working Families for Wal-Mart employees. Call Working Families for Wal-Mart and you get an Edelman employee on the line. Ask Working Families for Wal-Mart a question and they have to check back with Edelman (and probably Wal-Mart after that) before you get an answer.
Working Families for Wal-Mart is kind of like the great and powerful Oz. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, but very little THERE there. However, instead of a kindly old man from Kansas the little man behind the curtain is really a bunch of 20-somethings with M.A.s in communications.
Sock puppet actually strikes me as the perfect term for them, but I mean that in the literal sense of the word. Wal-Mart is literally holding “Working Families” up financially and speaking its words through their mouths. Scratch the surface of Working Families for Wal-Mart and it’s Edelman and Wal-Mart all the way down. Indeed, there is hardly a working family in sight in anything they do. “Wal-Mart for Wal-Mart” would be a better name for them.
If Working Families for Wal-Mart is really like Oz, then their “Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain” moment was when they started adding tag lines to their blog posts. How is a group with no discernable source of income besides Wal-Mart able to afford the largest PR firm on the planet as a client?
Apparently, the little men (and women) behind the curtain have a new poll out today. Who wants to call and ask who REALLY paid for it? Who wants to be Dorothy?
Come on members of the press and PR outlets! This is where the Edelman story is headed next. The phone number is on the press release I linked to above. Just dial the number and ask. Edelman employees are standing by.
After we get finished excoriating the PR industry perhaps we can turn to the pollsters.
The question included this choice:
“A campaign against Wal-Mart should be the top
priority for labor union leaders today”
Unsurprisingly only 13% of people thought so. I don’t think that even any of us Walmart wonks would say this should be the top priority.
Now a realistic question like “do you think unions should keep up the pressure on Walmart to treat their employees better” might have produced an entirely different response.
Why do people hang on polls so closely when it has been shown time and time again that they are either poorly constructed, or that people lie in their responses? To answer my own question, its not really a poll it just more PR ammunition.
People who really want to know what people think (like, say, Proctor and Gamble) use “product research studies” not polling.
You can see how Wal-Mart’s critics are failing by looking at how awareness of their efforts has actually fallen.
If this is the case, why the need for the Working Families for Wal-Mart, Paid Critics and Blogging Across America flogs?
Wal-Mart could save some change for their stockholders if they got rid of those unneccessary websites.
[...] Brian, one of the better-paid critics at Paid Critics, has a typically combative post on the Working Families for Wal-Mart poll I briefly alluded to yesterday: The Austin American-Statesman offers the latest evidence that the union leaders’ attempts to turn Wal-Mart into a political issue have failed miserably. Long after the hot air from the union leader-contrived bus tour has mercifully dissipated, “in this final week of 2006 campaigning, the Wal-Mart issue has not figured prominently in debates or candidate ads.†[...]