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liar_liar.jpgIt’s time for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) to throw Edelman PR out. Edelman clearly violated WOMMA’s ethics code, not once, not twice, for four times. Or doesn’t the code mean anything?
Richard Edelman pledged last week that his company would henceforth be honest and transparent. Yet today’s MediaPost reports that Edelman is behind two more fake blogs (flogs) that it left out of its mea culpas.
Edelman bragged last week that Edelman helped write WOMMA’s ethics code when he admitted that Edelman was behind two fake Wal-mart blogs (flogs.)
One of the newly exposed fake blogs appears on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, the allegedly grassroots advocacy group formed by Edelman last December, which is “committed to fostering open and honest dialogue…that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families.” The second blog is on WFWM’s subsidiary site Paid Critics.
“Doesn’t anybody at Edelman see the irony behind having their own paid critics writing Wal-Mart’s Paid Critics blog?” asks Sean Carton, a blogger, author of eight books about technology and the Internet, and chief strategy officer for Baltimore interactive consultancy idfive
Both blogs posted notices saying that “In response to comments and emails, we’ve added author bylines to blog posts here.”
Every entry on the blogs is now credited to one of three contributors: Miranda, Brian or Kate. A click on these first names reveals biographies of Edelman employees Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall, whose clients include Working Families for Wal-Mart, the sites say. Their bios say “____works for Edelman. One of her clients is Working Families for Wal-Mart.”