bloggedy blog

:: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 ::

Everyday low flackery
I guy who works for the PR firm of retail giant Wal-Mart has been feeding tidbits to bloggers -- not to promote a new product or service, but simply to shore up its public image. I have more to say over at higher ed marketing, but infOpinions? has a better take on it.

Frankly, I see no problem with corporations or other entities working the blogosphere to promote themselves. Heck, half the books I read these days come from publishers who want me to review the books on one of my blogs. (That wasn't the case for the recently reviewed Naked Conversations, by the way. Should I have disclosed that?) But those are products, and different than simple snippets of info about a company. If a publisher just wanted me to post nice things about their business, I doubt I'd do that.

But I digress. There are two main issues at play here. First, Wal-Mart's approach -- or the approach its PR folks are taking -- strikes me as unseemly. No wonder we PR flacks have such a bad rep. Second, the bloggers who are posting positive "news" about Wal-Mart aren't always mentioning that their info came from Wal-Mart. So the blogosphere has to shoulder some of the responsibility. One of the unwritten rules of blogging has to do with crediting your source of information. (Hat tip for the NY Times article goes to Lance, one of my colleagues at UMR.

blogging, Wal-Mart

:: Andrew 18:12 + ::
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