Working Families for Wal-Mart May Be Dying

Wal-Mart has a lamentable record when it comes to running Web sites; its phony Walmarting Across America site, launched after consulting with PR giant Edelman, was shut down last October after its sponsorship became public, creating a huge PR scandal. And while everybody knows that Wal-Mart pays the bills at Working Families for Wal-Mart, at the domain forwalmart.com, the site doesn't even mention this in its About section, leading to an obviously inevitable question: "What is Wal-Mart trying to hide?"

Oddly, the Working Families for Walmart site looks as if it's been languishing for the past few months. Its News Center section was last updated in February: that's five months ago. Its Featured Stories section is also showing its age, no stories have been uploaded since February of 2007. Interestingly, another Wal-Mart-funded site, PaidCritics.com ("Exposing the Paid Critics of Wal-Mart") was last updated in March. That's a lot of bitrot for any multi-billion dollar retailing giant to tolerate.

Could it be that Wal-Mart has abandoned its habitual Sock Puppeting/AstroTurfing strategy of launching phony sites to influence public perceptions? Let's hope so: this kind of thing represents the worst kind of corporate behavior in cyberspace, and undermines whatever trust users might otherwise have in the company.

If Wal-Mart wants to rebuild its online reputation, it needs to take steps in the direction of transparency and accountability, pledge that it will not engage in deceptive practices online, and relegate sites such as Working Families for Walmart to the dustbin. (Note: I am neither a paid critic of Wal-Mart nor in the pay of Wal-Mart.)

PR Scandal Closes WalmartingAcrossAmerica.com

Wal-Marting Across America, a site launched and paid for by Working Families for Wal-Mart, was forced to cease updates last week, when news reports disclosed that Wal-Mart had hired Washington Post reporter James Thresher to produce photos for it.

According to news reports, "Wal-Mart outfitted the RV and turned it over to Thresher and his partner, Laura St. Claire, who drove it cross-country, staying overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots. Along the way, they posted favorable photographs and interviews of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees."

Thresher was disciplined by his boss, and agreed to stop taking money from Wal-Mart (the Washington Post's editorial policy forbids freelancing for interest groups). The whole crazy idea of launching this fake property was hatched, I'm told, by the big brains at Edelmen, which should have anticipated that their ruse would have been uncovered. The result is considerable tarnishing of the Wal-mart and Edelmen brands.

WalmartingAcrossAmerica.com was launched too recently to be archived at the Internet Archive. If you want to save this one for your Top 10 PR Disaster files, grab your screen shots now before Wal-mart, Edelmen, or Working Families for Walmart pulls the plug on this stinker.

Wal-Mart Shuts Down "The Hub"

The Hub, whose domain was http://schoolyourway.walmart.com, was Wal-Mart's effort to gain some traction in the uber-hot but largely vaporous social networking space, and it shut down last week.

The Hub was excoriated by Ad Age commentator Bob Garfield as "a bomb" and "excruciatingly bad shortly after it launched in July.

Grab your screenshots now: this is one that many people will have a very hard time remembering in a year or so.