Call Goes Out for Edelman and Rubel to ResignPosted by Kailey Astor FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“To live up to its premise, to fulfill its promise, the Me2Revolution must be prepared from time to time to correct its course,” declared Amanda Chapel, managing editor of Strumpette. “Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel have committed numerous acts of abject betrayal that, under any revolution worth the name, would have resulted in their execution in the public square. Edelman and Rubel hurt us, hurt blogging, and hurt PR as a whole." Their offenses primarily revolve around Edelman PR’s increasingly disastrous representation of the discount retailer Wal-Mart. Within the past year alone, Edelman has:
• Engaged in secretive dialogues with carefully selected bloggers with the intention of slipping uncredited, Wal-Mart-approved spin into their seemingly spontaneous utterings; “Where I come from, three strikes and you’re out,” Chapel said. "This is not going to stop until they are removed." The “Wal-Marting Across America” scam was first reported by BusinessWeek Online on October 8. However, neither Richard Edelman nor Steve Rubel saw fit to address the matter in their own blogs, or anywhere else, until yesterday, October 16. Edelman said the delay was necessary because, “We needed to wait until we had all of the facts. I posted as soon as I was fully confident.” However, Edelman’s website promotes a “Crisis and Issues” practice that works to spin situations exactly like this: "Edelman’s crisis and issues counselors work with a client’s senior management team throughout the crisis to provide guidance, to develop strategic plans, to defend reputation and to implement recovery initiatives. We partner with our clients to develop the most effective responses to crises using our international network of strategic counselors, quickly assessing the situation and charting a course to minimize the reputational and business damage to the client, its brands and its operations." "But you can't spin the web," Chapel said. "The truth is going to come out." Indeed that’s ultimately what happened yesterday. In a public statement Rubel said, "I would give up my blog (MicroPersuasion) before I gave up working for them (Edleman)." One commentor uniquely captured the public's reaction, “Those are perhaps the saddest words about the matter. It is boilerplate old-school PR and disregards everything that Web 2.0 and the blogosphere has championed about all of us as individuals. This is the people's revolution. If you don't understand the ground rules and the speed at which things move by now, it's time to take yourself out of the game. Their apology is empty. OK, they admit to screwing up but there's an even bigger problem now. It's time to explain how this could even happen." In the spirit of transparency, Strumpette also called upon Edelman and Rubel to “open the books” of its social media practice so that the PR industry can determine for itself if Edelman has engaged in other faux-blogging programs for other clients, and/or if Edelman in fact has any clients besides Wal-Mart for which social-media tactics are being used. "There has always been an inherent contradiction between what Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel practice for Edelman clients, and what they preach to the rest of the PR industry,” Chapel said. “They have misled countless other PR practitioners into believing the public relations industry has a role to play in the blogosphere, when all the empirical evidence shows that the blogosphere utterly rejects PR, and becomes immediately suspicious whenever a seemingly independent blog appears that promotes the cause of a corporation, candidate or issue." "The fact is, in an environment where the public only trusts ‘people like me,’ public relations professionals have zero role to play. The sooner the industry admits it, the better for everyone," Chapel added. Bookmark This
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BTW, they got a scandal on the German market, too, when they introduced their cooperation with Technorati to control and sell information about bloggers to their customers to the German Blogosphere - see Johnny Haeuslers story in translation here:
http://www.spreeblick.com/2006/10/13/technoradi-in-frankfurt/#comment-212400 Schadenfreude is a German word ;-)
And so the downward spiral begins... any predictions on who/what will be the next to fall on its sword? MicroPersuasion?
Amanda,
I don't think Richard should resign. He just needs Penance, big time. His blog is now part pulpit, part confessional. So, let's revive the Strumpette Confessional and mandate that he spend 10 hours there recounting all his PR sins.
No one needs to resign, but everyone in PR should let this be a lesson-- and one we should have all learned by now. As we point out on our blog today (www.publiccompanyhell.com): It's all about transparency.
Our leader blogger, Joe made a great point: "The biggest headline-generating stories of the past five years have all been about lack of transparency and full disclosure: the Enron-era fiasco, the Iraq War, the clergy scandals." Just as in old-school journalism, honesty will always prevail in the blogosphere.
No... with all due respect.
"Transparency" is the new universal rationale for the have-nots to get the haves to show them their cards so they can dis- intermediate the game so they can win. "Honesty" on the other hand is the 2000 plus year old commitment to fair dealing that God gave at least some of us so as to frustrate fraud and theft. Hope that clears things up. As such there is a definite NEED for Edelman and Rubel to resign. They are NOT being honest. They are not going to be honest. Their very success in the business of PR is based on their ability to lie. - Amanda
Thanks for the clarification, Amanda.
I like your definition of transparency. Wish I'd thought of it!
No doubt, those are great definitions, but it's almost just a debate over semantics. Call it transperency, call it honesty-- we're all asking for the same thing: Please don't decieve us, just because you can get away with it.
And that's exactly what we're afraid of. Edelman learned a lesson, but it wasn't to be honest. Rather, it was to be more careful next time so you don't get caught. My hope is that the blogosphere will make it more difficult to get away with the kind of dishonesty too often practiced in PR.
You know, I could forgive the slow response to a point. But then again, they're supposed to be one of the world's top PR firms - I doubt they'd take that long to respond for a client in a similar situation.
What really sickens me though is the hypocrisy that these sites are STILL UP, with no indication on the front page as to what's going on (if you click on "Miranda's" profile there is now a disclosure -- too little, too late), while running PaidCritics.org criticizing the fact that some of Wal-Mart's critics are paid. This came out, when, mid-October? The fact that this is being allowed to continue a full two months later indicates to me that their heart's not in it. Add Comment
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NEW YORK – Popular PR industry trade journal Strumpette today declared Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel to be “enemies of the blogosphere,” and demanded their immediate resignations.
The last two weeks haven't been the greatest for the Edelman PR Firm. The revelation of their client's blogs (WalMart) being fake, a term now coined as Flogs or Flogging, and recent revelation of direct Edelman employees writing in the blogs have made it to the front page of at least one major news outlet. There has even been a
Tracked: Oct 22, 12:12
The Edelman/Wal Mart situation is now largely behind us. WOMMA has weighed in with its sanctions. It’s still an important story, but we’re now in the aftermath stage and the bulk of the conversation has passed, having moved on to other matter...
Tracked: Nov 05, 12:12