So why should Wal-Mart Blog?

My original blog was just one of those quick posts all bloggers sometimes do. I was in an airport waiting to catch a plane and saw the New York Times article Wal-Mart’s War Room. So I knocked off a quick squib saying that America’s largest retailer would be better off blogging than, well war-rooming. By the time I checked email at my destination, a few comments and Trackbacks had shown that a lot of people thought my idea was pretty dim. What on Earth good Wal-Mart gain by blogging? Then, Juan pointed me to this lame blog by Wal-Mart, which seems to me to be a pretty poor use of cyberspace. Then, while I'm ordering some nice Chinese for dinner, my own editor, Jim Minatel, scoops me with six ideas for Wal-Mart blogs.

"Whew," as that geeky guy from Redmond says.

So let me start that this is one of those things that I may have started, but it got ahead of me.  In fact, I didn't start it, Wal-Mart did when they began to abandon the values set by its founder Sam Walton and set about figuring out how to relentlessly squeeze profits from slender profits that gave consumers the low prices they wanted.

Can a blog really change the company's long and well-documented misbehavior in terms of how it treats employees, particularly older, female and handicapped employees and applicants; demands to cleanse literature and music to appease right wingers; insinuations of chicanery to persuade local boards to favor Wal-Mart incursions against local merchants, squezzing vendors have no choice but to do whatever the Huntsville-powerhouse tells them to do and so on and on. Just check Google and you'll see what I'm talking about.

And of course these ills will not be cured by a blog.  I simply said that Wal-Mart would do better with a real blog--not their current lame abuse of cyberspace--than they will with a War Room.

If Wal-Mart cares what their many publics, who have turned against it in increasing numbers think, a blog is the best possible forum for making their case. But it needs to be a real blog, with real people speaking in the candid, informal, imperfect  style that establishes authenticity and transparency. The attempt would go further than the image of a cluster of former paid political-professionals and Wal-Mart executives huddled in a windowless room to counteract what CNN or Fox had to say about them this morning. The blog is just more hometown than the war room and downright friendlier.

Would a genuine open-ended blog receive nasty comments? You bet they would.  But these nasty comments are already being said—whispered and shouted—in all sorts of places, by all sorts of people. Hell, I'm taking a few good shots right here. 

So why on Earth would Wal-Mart want to jump into this torrid conversational swamp?

Well for one thing, people get more polite when they know you are listening. Plus, if Wal-Mart has a case to make for itself, they can have a much better place to host the argument, then letting me host it here on this blog as I seem to be doing.  With an open blog, Wal-Mart's perspective would become better understood. I really would welcome hearing their side to the allegations that are being abundantly stacked against them. A war room, by its very name, will attempt to crush voices like mine, rather than reason with them.

I would love to hear what Wal-Mart plans to do to change--not its image--but its practices.  And if they are not going to change, I would at least hope they can actively listen so they can understand how so many decent people have come to really hate them.

But in reality, I don't think they will, not with anything authentic, that would invite real dialogue.  It's one of those cultural things.  After all, they're #1, right? Stock's doing just fine.  Same store sales are well up this quarter.  Everything's going along just fine.  Why bother?

Because the world is changing and Wal-Mart refuses to be in conversations they cannot control and slowly, steadily it will hurt them.  They won't even realize it has happened, until it is too late.

Comments

[Rich Dudley]

Huntsville? You mean Bentonville?

[shel]

Yes, Bentonville, Rich. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Daneca Vail]

Hello i think that the people that do not like wal mart suck. Because wal mart is the right place to go shopping when you do not have a lot of money. And if you do not like wal mart why. Wal mart has almost all the things that you would need to buy.