This isn’t news. I’m getting it from Gawker (via Wal-Mart Watch):

In response to our call for lying flack stories, a tipster who works as “a high level advertising and marketing executive” brings us a story about Edelman, the huge PR firm that reps clients like Wal-Mart and Shell, and talks a lot about ethics in its marketing materials. So this little tale, while perhaps not surprising to those of you who have ever thought about the true meaning of “media training,” is still pretty blatant:

I’m a high-level advertising and marketing executive who’s hired – and used- some of the top PR firms in the nation.
As part of their “media training” they commonly tell you lying is fine.
From a direct quote within an Edelman (the nation’s largest independent PR firm) session, training our entire senior management team:

“Sometimes, you just have to stand up there and lie. Make the audience or the reporter believe that everything is ok. How many times have you heard a CEO stand up and say “No, I’m not leaving the company” and then – days later – he’s gone. Reporters understand that you “had” to do it and they won’t hold it against you in your next job when you deal with them again.”

[Emphasis added]

I haven’t just seen this strategy at work, I’ve lived it. Want to know when I lost my p.r. innocence? No, it wasn’t “Wal-Marting Across America.” That was so transparent it was never going to fool anyone for half a second. It was the Nazi T-shirts.

Now that we have an archives and a search engine that work, I can easily take you in the way-back machine to 2006. Peter did the first post on this after finding it at Bent Corner on November 9th. The next day Edelman’s Mike Krempasky sent me (and I suspect every other blog that linked to the story) the Wal-Mart press release apologizing for selling the shirts with a symbol that the company didn’t understand until now. It then stated how they were already in the process of pulling the offending shirts from their store. Fair-minded person that I aspire to be, I posted it.

As anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows, the shirts still haven’t completely disappeared from Wal-Mart’s shelves, and the Consumerist has been going to town on Wal-Mart for it ever since. Does Edelman care that Wal-Mart turned one of its representatives into a liar? Of course not – lying for Wal-Mart is Krempasky’s job. Richard Nixon deliberately kept his Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, out of the loop so that he could lie for them better. I’m not even remotely surprised to find out that Krempasky has no such excuse.

I am now cynical enough to understand this, and in the limited dealings I have had with Mike and his colleague Marshall Manson they have been nothing but polite and helpful. But then again I don’t shop at Wal-Mart and I already expect the worst of the company.

What about Wal-Mart’s customers? Reporters may understand that they’re going to be lied to on a regular basis, but do the people that shop there? If they do, why does Wal-Mart waste millions of dollars each year on Edelman? After all, they could always lie to the public just as easily and just as often for free.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 1423 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Edelman, Nazi T-Shirt, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.