November 2, 2006
The Ethics Lesson from the Wal-Mart/Edelman flog fiasco
You know, we all learned pretty much everything we need to know to avoid a similar ethical foul up by the time we reached first grade.
It’s simple.
Tell the truth.
And here’s the truth. The failure in the Wal-Mart Edelman fiasco wasn’t simply a lack of understanding of how blogs and social media worked. That may have been part of it, but it wasn’t the root problem.
It was an ethical failure, full stop.
Here’s the lesson, and let’s be crystal clear. It is not okay to cloak your interests or advocate without honesty. Sure, people do it all the time. We call them liars. It doesn’t matter whether it is explicit or by omission. It is still a lie.
And here’s the other part of today’s lesson: this mess does not mean that companies shouldn’t blog, or sponsor blogs, or reach out to bloggers. The Wal-Gate mess was a lapse of ethics, not an indictment of social media. Social media can be excellent vehicles for reaching out to and talking with customers, but we have to do it honestly. Your customer knows you have an agenda. EVERYONE has an agenda of some sort. Be honest about your goals, disclose your interests, tell the truth,
It may not set you free, but when you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you told the last person.
Words to live by.
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Bye the bye, the latest word from Edelman on this –
He recently gave an interview to IT World (Japan). When asked what happened, he says: "We were insufficiently transparent about the identity of one of the two bloggers who went on that RV tour. And in a certain way, it’s not a failure of new media; it was a failure in all media. Which is to say, if they were talking to you in your IDG mainstream media hat, you would want to know the name of the spokesperson and what his background was and what his credentials were and we failed that basic test." He goes on to once again accept full responsibility as the boss and reiterate what they intend to do to prevent future occurences. I wish them luck. Thanks to Shel Holtz for the link.
UPDATE 11/3/06: Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) puts Edelman membership under 90-day review. See also WOMMA’s 20 Ethics Questions and discussion draft of guidelines for contacting bloggers.
Tags: Wal-Mart, Edelman, social media, ethics, fake blog, fake blogs, PR, public relations
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:42 am
As B.L. Ochman reports today, WOMMA punished Edelman by putting its membership under a 90-day review. I think we need to learn from this fiasco (and yes, Edelman should have known better), but then let go. It don’t think WOMMA’s late punishment will do social media ethics any good.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:00 pm
I still think it’s amazing that Richard Edelman says the only slip-up was a failure to identify one of the two bloggers.
You have an astroturf organization created by his agency that exists solely to promote Wal-Mart paying all the expenses of two professional journalists to go around and blog positively about Wal-Mart without disclosure and the only problem is that one guy’s last name wasn’t included??
November 9th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I agree with John’s take on Edelman’s “blunder.” It is obvious that Wal-Mart was gaining promotion from this blog, so what is the problem with claiming it was just that, a promotion stunt? I feel like Edelman is still lacking on the transparency thing. Hopefully they have learned thier lesson, as well as served as a model for what not to do for other companies playing in the blogosphere.