That Wascally Wal-Mart

For corporations providing goods and services, blogs provided yet another channel for promoting a product. Some, such as Sun Microsystems, General Motors, and Stonyfield Farms, have successfully managed to integrate their blogs into their website offerings. Others, such as Wal-Mart, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), and McDonald’s, have made major blunders. The main difference in their handling may be rooted to opposing attitudes about the nature of blogs. Successful corporate blogs recognize a savvy community with a recognized code of ethics and etiquette. Offending corporate blogs overlooked this aspect, choosing instead to treat their blogs as blunt marketing efforts, little more than interactive commercials.

In September 2006, a blog titled “Wal-Marting Across America” appeared, which followed Laura and Jim as they drove across country in their RV, interviewing happy Wal-Mart employees and customers along the way. A month later, site’s posts were removed, save for one goodbye and one explanation post (neither of them an apology). In what turned out to be the leading blog scandal of 2006, Wal-Mart, Edelman, and numerous others learned first-hand about the repercussions of a bad corporate blog.

Edelman, one of the premier firms in the PR industry, is actually a governing member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). As a governing member, they evaluate and help craft the ethical word-of-mouth marketing guidelines across a range of mediums, blogging being one of them. The objectives of their “Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines” are listed as follows:

--Help marketers work honestly and ethically within the blogosphere.
--Promote disclosure by marketers within blogs.
--Protect consumers by establishing ethical standards for marketing to and within blogs.
--Protect marketers' reputations from the damage that unethical behavior will cause.

While this is still a draft (see link item #6), the core components of the guidelines are there. The question is, how could Edelman, a leader in interactive marketing, have so blatantly disregarded them? From the explanation provided by Laura, the intent of her blog was not meant to be another insidious marketing effort. A fan of RVing, she and her partner had discovered that Wal-Marts allowed RVs to park overnight for free. Already planning a major trip, she thought:

We would take vacation from our full-time jobs and drive across the country in a rented RV, from city to city, spending the night in a different Wal-Mart parking lot every night. And, of course, I’d write an article about it and may be able to sell a story to an RV magazine, with photos, of RVing in America and only staying at Wal-Marts.

Utilizing her connections to Edelman, whom she knew handled Wal-Mart’s PR, she attempted to obtain permission to write such a story rather than risk litigation afterwards. To her surprise, Edelman quickly pitched her idea to Working Families for Wal-Mart, and they agreed to underwrite the trip. (Wal-Mart, in its own defense, has distanced itself from this decision by Working Families as it is an independent organization, though it receives funding from them.)

So far, all is well and good by the guidelines. But the problems began when the bloggers failed to disclose that the blog was now technically a commercial entity, no longer representing the sole interests of Laura and Jim. The scope of their original project was altered by the contract with Working Families, even though it was a direction the bloggers enjoyed taking. Telling the (mostly positive) stories of people encountered in Wal-Marts is not a sin in the blogging community, but failing to make your affiliation apparent is considered deceptive. Edelman, in charge of the site, is responsible for failing to apply its own WOMMA guidelines of transparency.

It was anti-Wal-Mart watchdog bloggers who first discovered the connection, which was then massively exposed by BusinessWeek.com. The unveiling of the blogger’s identities made the situation seem more deceptive. Laura St. Claire was a freelance writer and employee at the U.S. treasury, and her partner, Jim Thresher, was a staff photographer for The Washington Post. Professional journalists, writing on behalf of Wal-Mart, ought to have realized that they represent more than ‘Laura and Jim, average Americans.’

THE FINALE (part 1 of ???)

The blogging phenomena is still a young one; the blogosphere, as a recognized community, is still less than 10 years old. Many of the activities which could be argued as early blogging, went nameless before then, still too mixed up in early websites to be considered a separate entity. Yet the growth of the community has been staggering: as of December 2006, Technorati has been tracking some 60 million individual blogs.
The rules governing this rapidly expanding community are still being framed. At best, there is a recognized code of conduct and etiquette, but no enforcement other than social backlash. This rarely extends beyond the blogging community; there are occasional cases of a firing or bad press, but no blog-specific legal or financial penalties currently exist.
Now that bloggers have started to go commercial, the guidelines governing these will have to become stricter and better enforced. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), is a collection of companies who promote an ethical framework for commercial blogs. For the most part, however, the blogging community still relies on a kind of internet ‘neighborhood watch’ to identify and punish offending blogs.

The blogosphere can be described using a number of worthy metaphors, including that of ‘the wild west.’ I think that in evaluating corporate blogs, Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point players could also be valuable. He identifies the following 3 characters as setting off marketing epidemics:

Mavens – Individuals with a wealth of information in their chosen field.
Connectors – Those with unusually large social circles.
Salesmen – Highly influential people whose behaviors are more likely to be mimicked.

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  Bloggers generally fall mostly into the maven and connector categories, naturally inclined to find information and help it proliferate. As discussed in class, bloggers tend to be tech-savvy, information addicted, opinionated, vocal, and tribal, all qualities which equip them with forming and governing various social communities on the internet. Many also consider themselves proud members of a subculture that is skeptical of mass media, government, and big business machinations. These are not apathetic people. They are highly engaged with their community.
  
  They are also, young, affluent, high-tech, and increasingly popular. According to an August 2005 comScore survey of blogs and bloggers:
  
  50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population.
  Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each.
  Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women.
  Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections.
  Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online.

Now that Google, Yahoo, Technorati and others have made blog searches possible, it is easier than ever for marketers to assess general attitudes about their brands. For example, GoogleTrends is a new tool that tracks the number of searches over a span of timeline, represented by a graph with certain points corresponding with highly relevant (in Google assessment) website and article appearances.

The growing number of bloggers and blog visitors is starting to affect mass media outlets, too. “In fact, Blogspot.com now reaches more visitors than NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and WashingtonPost.com -- clear evidence that consumer-generated media can draw audience on par with traditional online publishers.” (comScore report ‘Behaviors of the Blogosphere,’ 8/2005) Instead of turning to mass media, the masses are creating new media.

Some companies have gone so far as to create projects in which crowdsourcing is implemented, inviting knowledgeable participants to contribute to research efforts or product construction. Proctor&Gamble rewards independent researchers and scientists for valuable contributions to ongoing challenges posted on Innocentive.com. While not technically of the blogging domain, the behavior falls into the category of consumer-generated material that also encompasses blogs and YouTube videos.