"In the Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart is only doing what so many Americans are doing -- jumping up to contribute something, in the way they best can. Besides setting up its own people, newly displaced, Wal-Mart was all about getting beds to the Astrodome, computers to shelters to help evacuees and their families find one another, filling emergency prescriptions -- in addition to making financial donations to the Salvation Army and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund."
-Kathryn Jean Lopez, "Big Blue Civics," National Review, September 21, 2005.
In August, seven media-savvy professionals from Edelman, a Chicago public relations firm, flew to Bentonville, Ark., for an unusual assignment. Although they remain on Edelman's payroll, the PR experts, some of them seasoned veterans of political campaigns, now run a new office deep in the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT).
Dubbed "Action Alley," the office -- as well as a similar one in Washington, D.C. -- acts as the nerve center of the world's largest retailer's campaign to soften its public face. Backed by Wal-Mart's own publicity staff, the team responds within hours to any new blast of criticism.
SWEET CHARITY. The troops also try to spin positive stories about the corporate giant. As they sat facing one another around three tables arranged in a U shape one day in mid-September, Hurricane Katrina was still high on the agenda. Action Alley had scored a bull's-eye after just weeks on the job when it garnered widespread national publicity about Wal-Mart's efficient relief efforts following New Orleans' devastation.
Now the team was deep in follow-up, making press calls guided by talking points scrawled on the felt-marker boards lining the perimeter of the room: "EOC," for emergency operations center, which earned so much praise for coordinating the company's disaster response. Plus, "associate stories," referring to the experiences of individual employees during the storm, and "donation-partnership," meaning stories about Wal-Mart's charity.
-Business Week, "Can Wal-Mart Wear a White Hat,", September 22, 2005.
