Reader something_amazing pinged us on our thoughts of the fallout over Edelman, Walmart, PR and blogs. It serves as a nice excuse to vent on this subject so we thought we would share them with you.

You know, all transparent like…

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something_amazing: hey, ben, in your opinion does edelman coming out with these blogs indicate that there may be some sort of internal backlash against krempasky since he was head of the blogging division?
fakeout: nope, they’re outing themselves before anyone else has a chance to
something_amazing: well it would seem to me that if Krempasky where the one who was heading much of this “blog reach out” program, and this was a big smear back in the face of Edelman that there may be some inclination of internal upset against krempasky?
something_amazing: ie: a good portion of Krempasky’s entire job for Edelman has just been reset to ground zero.
something_amazing: And it may have served to issue bad water to Edelman regarding using blogs as a PR tool in the future. Enough to the point where Krempasky may be worried about his job.
fakeout: Mmm that’s reaching. I think it’s more like Richard Edelman said: “fix this shit. ” But if they’re smart, they will use this as a lesson to reevalutate how to use blogs. They’ve established so much equity as being the PR agency that “gets” blogs.
something_amazing: Yeah, at the very least. I mean if Richard Edelman is coming out and essentially apologizing, then there has to be some indication that he’s not happy with it. And you’re right about reevaluating but what will it amount to, full disclosures or just trying to become sneakier?
fakeout: There’s too much invested to abandon wholesale
something_amazing: I hope it goes to Full Disclosure.
fakeout: Well, the word transparancey will get thrown around even more
something_amazing: But disclosure defeats the purpose of PR
fakeout: And I bet there will be a few blogs set up as being like, “we are the full disclosure awesomeness site”
something_amazing: heh 😉
fakeout: and while everyone claps them on the back for that, they will go and do something even more dastardly and sneaky
fakeout: “Gentleman, our failure here was not that we were sneaky. Far from it. Rather, we were not sneaky enough.”
fakeout: The thing that nags at me, though, about Edelman and blogs and Walmart
fakeout: Is the fracas is blurring the issue
fakeout: They’ve got us all focused on Edelman
fakeout: That’s what Edelman’s job is
fakeout: to defuse criticism towards their client
something_amazing: right– so you think Edelman has successfully parried and done exactly what their job is?
something_amazing: as opposed to wal-mart taking the heat?
fakeout: yup
fakeout: I’ll bet dimes to donuts there was this conversation with walmart:
fakeout: edelman: so we’re going to set up these fake blogs and organizations praising you
fakeout: walmart: cool
fakeout: conversation #2
fakeout: Walmart: how can we fight these unionizers? if we say anything in the press, we get slammed by activists
fakeout: edelman: let’s set up a fake walmart worker advocacy group denouncing unions
fakeout: walmart: cool
something_amazing: edelman: Well, they found out about workers for walmart… dude that was a pretty dumb idea I guess afterall. wal-mart: Ah well, better luck next time?

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