The whole point of this site is to act as a springboard for young PR professionals and students. So we think that when major issues come up in the field of public relations, this should be the first place you want to come to get the issue spelled out in plain terms. So, here goes for a major topic of interest in the PR blogosphere right now. But first a little background for those who might want it:

Background on Uses of Social Media

One thing that may be hard to understand until someone really spells it out like this is how exactly companies are trying to use blogs and other social media. One trend we are seeing, is a movement away from advertisements which some companies feel consumers can see right through and are not effective, to a more consumer-engaging way of communicating positive ideas about your company. That’s where blogs come in.

Granted, this idea is not catching on at lightening speed and is having a kind of slow adoption rate, but many people feel that it is the way of reaching consumers in the future, or any target audience for that matter.
(For some, this might be old hat, but who knows, this might be helping others…)

So some companies are looking to have conversations with their publics instead of sending one-way messages through advertisements that they can only hope the consumer will respond to positively. Some companies are responding to new media by having a customer service function which goes out and responds to complaints or queries about products posted on various consumers’ blogs. I have had that happen to me personally. Orvis did a remarkable job of finding where I had complimented a program of theirs and the company wrote me personally saying they were glad I enjoyed a particular program they were doing. I was impressed, heck I am sitting here still talking about it on this site, and that’s what other companies are trying to do: reinforce positive images or get rid of negative opinions of their company that are showing up in blogs for the rest of the world to see on the Internet.

Other than customer service, word-of-mouth campaigns are being started through blogs to reach audiences, and Wal-Mart is one company who has begun similar efforts.

The Situation at Hand

Wal-Mart hired Edelman PR to start various campaigns to counter some negative images of the company. One of the the campaigns is a site called Working Families for Wal-Mart and Exposing Wal-Mart’s Paid Critics which both try to raise awareness about the ways in which Wal-Mart is good for the community and also try to contradict the opinions of some of the groups which criticize Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart also wanted to re-instill some positive images by having blogs about positive Wal-Mart experiences straight from consumers. But, Wal-Mart and Edelman encountered a problem here. Edelman devised a couple of blogs that would be a part of the Working Families for Wal-Mart group. One of these was a couple who blogged about a vacation in which they drove across the country in an RV and parked in Wal-Mart parking lots along the way and blogged about their experiences. It was called, Wal-Marting Across America.

It’s a great idea for this kind of campaign, but the problem was the couple was hired by Edelman to produce the blog and did not make that fully known on the site. The man is a writer for the Washington Post, and his girlfriend is a free-lance writer. For more information on who the folks were, click here to read a Washington Post article on it.

The point is that Edelman and Wal-Mart made a faux pas in not disclosing all the information and being totally transparent with the couple’s relation to Edelman and Wal-Mart, which makes people obviously wonder about the couple’s true intentions on writing the sotries in the first place. The issue brings up numerous questions about ethics with the new social media which so far has a pretty young code of ethics associated with it. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has a code of ethics which most major companies who use social media would abide by ideally, but of course there is no real law breaking, just an understood code of ethics. Edelman has helped to develop and support this very code of ethics, thus muddying the waters even more.

Other blogs are buzzing about the issues surrounding this situation, so to see what the rest of the blogosphere is saying, we recommend some of the following posts:

• Richard Edelman’s blog - to hear Edelman’s statements about the issue. Read his official apology, and see what steps the company is taking.
• Robert French’s post - a PR teacher at Auburn University who gives a lengthy explanation of the situation and surrounding issues
• Shel Holtz’s blog - gives a fair discussion of the issues at hand in several different posts as well. See this early post, this update and this look at the blogosphere’s reaction.
• Constantin Basturea’s post - gives several updates on the issue as it
• Steve Rubel’s blog - works for Edelman and in particular with new media campaigns but is not directly related to the Wal-Mart campaign, but still offers some comments about the situation. See this post and this one.

(On some of the sites I listed, you may have to search through some of the earlier posts to find exact references to the issue.) (The above list has been amended to include links to individual posts on the topic - Paull Young)

Our own Richard Bailey will be discussing the ethics surrounding these transparency issues with social media in a broader sense tomorrow, so please check it out for another discussion of the ethics of these new mediums as a whole.

Comments on the issue welcome as always!

Note: As the managing editor of Forward is an Edelman employee, she turned full editorial responsibility for this post over to Paull Young and me to ensure objectivity. - Ashley

Technorati Tags: Edelman, public relations, new media, WOMMA, Wal-Mart, transparency

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