Better watch what you say.
Edelman’s newest flog, or fake blog, is a brilliant little hit campaign designed to intimidate us into showing reverence for Wal-Mart.
They want you to believe that commies like me, who think of Wal-Mart as a cultural and economical contagion, have financial incentive to do so.
(It’s not because being in the place for more than five minutes makes our skin crawl.)
Folks who just recently picked up a 9000 FREE Hours of AOL CD with their beloved 72-pack of Sam’s Choice Cola will probably read the flog and believe it.
Wal-Mart’s mercenary hit squad did some very convincing pseudomarketing. The writing is clever, the criticism and doubt-casting is masterful (as one would expect from top PR professionals), and the graphic design is brilliant. The spin doctors’ prescription suggests that Wal-Mart is a benevolent corporate “Robin Hood” that provides jobs, charity, and generous discounts to the working classes. The only problem is that is getting bullied by an malevolent conspiracy of paid critics.
Who exactly are these “paid critics?”
Apparently any politicians who receive donations from local businesses (on the brink of getting shut down by Wal-Mart) are the evil kingpins. They are the top of the massive payola conspiracy of Professional Wal-Mart Critics®.
If criticizing Wal-Mart paid anything close to what a high-end journalist writing a flog on the Wal-Mart corporate PR account must earn – I would love to be a salaried, Professional Wal-Mart Critic®!
It would be the easiest job in the world! you would never run out of material for inspiration. You could make it a comedy or a tragedy. You could make it like “Hee Haw,” “Clerks,” or a Michael Moore anti-corporate documentary. The wealth of possibilities for critical satire is even richer than Sam Walton.
Sign me up!
And send me my first check for this piece.