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November 01, 2005
Wal*Mart: The High Cost of Public Relations
The NY Times' Michael Barbaro front-pages his encounter with Wal*Mart's "war room", the multibillion-dollar conglomerate's attempt to counter the impending release of the latest doc by Outfoxed's Robert Greenwald, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and he sounds downright, down-home excited to get privileged access to Wal*Mart's attack machine. "Inside a stuffy, windowless room..., veterans of the 2004 Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns sit, stand and pace around six plastic folding tables. Open containers of pistachio nuts and tropical trail mix compete for space with laptops and BlackBerries... A scene from a campaign war room? ...It is a war room inside the headquarters of Wal-Mart [hoping] to sell a new, improved image to reluctant consumers. Wal-Mart is taking a page from the modern political playbook. Under fire from well-organized opponents who have hammered the retailer with criticisms of its wages, health insurance and treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has quietly recruited former presidential advisers... When small-business owners or union officials - also employing political operatives from past campaigns [Shame on them! Shame!] - criticize the company, the war room swings into action with press releases, phone calls to reporters and instant Web postings...
"The first big challenge of the strategy [comes today] with the premiere of an unflattering documentary. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price... To keep up with its critics, Wal-Mart "has to run a campaign," said Robert McAdam, a former political strategist at the Tobacco Institute who now oversees Wal-Mart's corporate communications. "It's simply nonsense for us to let some of these attacks go without a response."... The Greenwald movie... features whistle-blowers who describe Wal-Mart managers cheating workers out of overtime pay and encouraging them to seek state-sponsored health care when they cannot afford the company's insurance... It travels across small-town America to assess the effects on independent businesses and downtowns after a Wal-Mart opens." Barbaro brings on the branding: "Wal-Mart has introduced a line of urban fashions called Metro 7, hired hundreds of fashion specialists to monitor how clothing is displayed in stores, and produced more polished advertising [directed toward] consumers, in the words of Wal-Mart's chief executive, "who are not worried about their next paycheck." Part of Wal*Mart's early reaction is to extended outakes of an interview with "former Wal-Mart manager Weldon Nicholson, just one of the stories we tell in the film. A manager for 17 years, he confesses deeply personal stories about his crisis of conscience, how it was to see workers who couldn't afford to eat, marking family businesses for destruction, and bribing local officals." SAYS GREENWALD in an email today, "They can outspend us, they can make fancier flyers and brochures, hire more consultants and press agents, but it will all be a vain attempt to smokescreen what Wal-Mart can no longer hide."
Posted by pride at November 1, 2005 09:37 AM