|
Posts with tag: walmart | Return to BloggersBlog.com Homepage
Giant Retailers Blogging About Products
 Major retailers like Amazon.com and Wal-Mart are using blogs as a way to showcase some of their products and generate interest in new products. Wal-Mart has a blog called Check Out which is written by a team of experts at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. Seattle Times writes that Check Out provides a window into the opinions of Wal-Mart's tastemakers.
The result is an intensely personal window into the lives, preferences and quirks of the powerful tastemakers at Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, who have spent years shielded from public view.
Their decisions about what makes it onto Wal-Mart's shelves have enormous effect, earning (or costing) vendors millions of dollars. It was a blogger on Check Out, after all, who first disclosed last month that Wal-Mart would stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format, rather than the rival HD DVD system. The decision was considered the death knell for HD DVD.
On the blog, Marvin Deshommes, a merchandise manager in the lawn and garden department, tells readers that he belongs to the Christian Life Cathedral church. His favorite quote from the Bible is Luke 12:48 -- "To whom much is given, from him much will be required."
Joe Muha, a video-game buyer, discloses that Ayn Rand is one of his favorite authors. Danielle Pribbernow, a toy buyer, talks about her cat, Sierra.
Wal-Mart says the Web site helps buyers solicit quick feedback from consumers on the merchandise -- and shows a softer side of the giant company, which has 5,000 stores, 1.2 million workers and annual sales of nearly $400 billion.
The concept is similar to Amazon.com's Daily Blog where Amazon.com's editors discuss cool products and products in the news. Wal-Mart's been behind some lame projects in the past such as the lame social network called The Hub and a travel flog. This latest blog is much better than those failed PR stunts. Wal-Mart's Check Out blog does have comments and you can read the comment policy here.
Posted on March 6, 2008
Permalink | | | Comments (View)
| |
Blogger Finds Nazi Skull Shirts at Wal-Mart
Bloggers that blog about finding something very unusual can sometimes receive a big traffic surge. That's what happened to the Bent Corner blog when they posted about finding t-shirts for sale at Wal-Mart that contained the Totenkopf or Death's Head symbol once worn by German Nazi SS members. The shirts also contain the year 1978 on them.
I stopped in at Wal-Mart today after I got off work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men's clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or "Death's Head".
I took a picture of it with my camera phone.
The Death's Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Wal-Mart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It's almost an exact copy.
Bent Corner received 55,000 visits in a single day from the Totenkopf post. The blogger at Bent Corner also blogs that he received an email from Edelman, Walmart's PR firm, explaining that the Totenkopf t-shirts were stocked by mistake and that they would be quickly removed from Wal-Mart stores. In this same post, Bent Corner says that Wal-Mart isn't pulling the shirts fast enough and that gleeful teenage Nazi wannabes who saw his post have rushed out to Wal-Mart to buy the t-shirts.
More coverage at Ad Pulp, The Blog Herald, Debbie Schlussel and The Consumerist.
Posted on November 11, 2006
Permalink | | | Comments (View)
| |
Walmart's Travel Flog
 BusinessWeek reports how a blog about two people RVing from Las Vegas to Georgia has turned out to be a fakish blog called Walmarting Across America. The blog was backed by Wal-Mart and its PR firm Edelman. The Walmarting RV parked at Wal-Mart stores and the bloggers took photographs of ever-happy Wal-Mart employees.
Every Wal-Mart employee that Laura and Jim run into, from store clerks to photogenic executives, absolutely loves to work at the store. Sound like a great Wal-Mart publicity campaign? Anyone familiar with Wal-Mart and its reputation for being quite stingy with wages and benefits will roll their eyes at such a rosy picture. In fact, some critics are so skeptical that they wonder whether Jim and Laura are real or whether they were concocted at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
"Wal-Mart has hired fake people," says Jonathan Rees, a labor historian and associate professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo, who has also worked as a staff researcher at the AFL-CIO. In a blog posting for the Web site The Writing On the Wal, Reese published an open letter to Laura and Jim challenging them to reveal themselves and asking who paid for their RV and gas.
It turns out that the blog was sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization launched by Edelman. Deep Jive Interests explains.
In spite of the ever growing echochamber the blogosphere lives in, it never astounds me what gets missed from time to time; in particular, there's a leading story in Businessweek about how a travel blog about Wal-mart (that is unabashedly positive about Wal-Mart), has in fact been sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart. What's wrong with that? Well, it turns out that WFWM is an organization that was launched by Edelman about 10 months ago, as a PR move to counter negative press about Wal-Mart.
Deep Jive Interests also notes that Edelman and Wal-Mart have generated unfavorable blogosphere buzz before -- see here and here. In Edelman's defense at least they didn't launch that horrid social network for Walmart.com.
Robert Scoble writes that blog integrity is important and relates the Wal-Mart RV blog incident to PayPerPost allowing bloggers to get paid for blog posts without disclosing it.
Shel Holtz wants to know where the Edelman bloggers are? "So where is Edelman in this particular conversation? Missing in action. As dismaying as this latest misstep is, it's even more dismaying to see Edelman's high-powered social media experts failing to walk the talk. Nothing from Richard in his vaunted 6 a.m. blog. Nothing from Steve, who blogs at the pinnacle of PR's A-list."
The final word from the Walmarting Across America blog blames the anti-Walmart crowd, as Mathew Ingram notes. The Walmarting Across America bloggers are also steadfast in their love of Wal-Mart.
Even these personal attacks won't sour my feelings about Wal-Mart. I've met too many great people in Wal-Marts across the county. I've met too many people - real people, not imaginary Internet people - who've told me about all the good Wal-Mart has done. I've camped in Wal-Mart parking lots. I've met these people and heard their stories firsthand. Which is something the people who attacked Jim and me haven't done and don't care to do.
So I've made the trip. I had a great time. I loved meeting the people we met, listening to the stories we heard. After everything that's happened, I even loved blogging about it all. And if I had the chance, I'd do it again.
In the end, that's all that really matters.
AdPulp reports that the photographer of the flog, who also works for the Washington Post, is in trouble because the Wal-Mart photographs violate his freelancing policy with the Post. The other problem with the blog is there are not many links to it from other blogs and some of the inbound links are just bloggers complaining about it. There must not have been much interest in watching people travel from one Wal-Mart to another.
Update 10-17-06: Edelman admits to "failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset." Edelman will also continue to support the WOMMA transparency guidelines they helped write. A-list blogger and Edelman employee Steve Rubel was not personally involved in the Walmarting blog.
Posted on October 15, 2006
Permalink | | | Comments (View)
| |
Wal-Mart Shutters Lame Social Network
 Do you hear the wails of thousands of angry teens? No. There are no upset or angry teenagers. There is only silence over Wal-Mart's defunct social network called The Hub or School Your Way. We blogged about The Hub's launch in July and we would like to remind everyone that "geniuses" from Sony were involved in this project.
WHO'S BEHIND THIS GENIUS WEB DESTINATION?
The guys from Wal-Mart and Sony teamed up to bring you all the sweet stuff you'll find on the HUB!
Hopefully, that statement just meant Sony donated prizes and not that Sony tech wizards came up with The Hub concept and design. We'd like to know if any teens actually received their "out of control" prizes.
WHAT KIND OF PRIZES ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
We're talking awesome Sony stuff from laptops to High Def Camcorders and all the gear that comes with them! We've also got another prize package that will really give you the celeb treatment: A trip for 2 to LA that includes spending money and a chance to meet some pretty impressive people in the industry of your choice!
SERIOUSLY?!
It's the real deal, guys, these prizes are out of control! All you have to do is make a page or submit a video clip to get your chance to win!
It would not be a true goodbye to The Hub without mentioning once again the three giant Web2.0 pencils that provided navigation for School Your Way. Wal-Mart's The Hub was so retro cool.
Farewell pitiful Wal-Mart social network. (via Mashable -> Blog Herald)
Posted on October 4, 2006
Permalink | | | Comments (View)
| |
Wal-Mart Tempts Teens With The Hub
Wal-Mart has launched The Hub (School Your Way), which is a contest and social network type of site. The site also features Wal-Mart fashions. The three giant pencils at the top of the page immediately reduce the site's potential. The FAQ explains some of the things kids can do on the site.
WHAT KIND OF PRIZES ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
We're talking awesome Sony stuff from laptops to High Def Camcorders and all the gear that comes with them! We've also got another prize package that will really give you the celeb treatment: A trip for 2 to LA that includes spending money and a chance to meet some pretty impressive people in the industry of your choice!
SERIOUSLY?!
It's the real deal, guys, these prizes are out of control! All you have to do is make a page or submit a video clip to get your chance to win!
WHO'S BEHIND THIS GENIUS WEB DESTINATION?
The guys from Wal-Mart and Sony teamed up to bring you all the sweet stuff you'll find on the HUB!
Woah! An Ad Age article says the site may be too unhip to impress teens. They briefly describe the content on the site.
The opening page shows video of four teens -- a bubbly fashionista, a Texas football player, a quirky skateboarder and an aspiring R&B singer from New York -- who are clearly actors reading a script, although the videos are positioned to appear authentic. Within, there are pages such as "Beth's Backyard Club," where you find a picture of her in a strapless prom dress above the approved quote: "I'll school my way by looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes to school to catch a cute boy's eye. ..."
The Ad Age article also quotes a couple of very unimpressed kids.
The site is an attempt at closing the trend gap Wal-Mart now faces as Target wins more teen-apparel dollars. But if Wal-Mart thought it could win over Amy Kandel, 14, of Columbus, Ohio, it was wrong. "Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren't at all, and they were just being kind of weird," she said. "Are these real kids?"
Nor did it impress Pete Hughes, 18. "It just seemed kind of corny to me," he said.
The site does sound a little too self-aware for today's tech-savvy youth but it might work for preteens -- the tween demographic. And prizes generally do get people to submit content even if they may not be completely enamored with the website. However, will this site really help Wal-Mart improve its image with teenagers or would they be better off with an advertising campaign on hip blogs and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook?
Posted on July 18, 2006
Permalink | | | Comments (View)
| |
|
|
The Writers Write Lifestyle Network
|
|
