UPDATE: Walmart’s bold response to The New York Times columnist Timothy Egan’s Op-Ed, which presented a negative assessment of the retail giant’s corporate shortcomings, was a hot topic across social media last week. After publishing this blog, countless articles emerged refuting the claims made by Walmart’s VP of Corporate Communications, David Tovar, in response to Egan’s Op-Ed, including this one tweeted to us on June 25:
While the PR strategy behind Walmart’s crafty response was commendable, it risks losing all credibility if the claims made were indeed false. Rather then emerging victorious from Egan’s assault, Walmart could have dug themselves even deeper into the pit of public opinion. A word to the wise when it comes to PR damage control: If you don’t have anything true to say, don’t say anything at all.
In case you missed it, U.S. retail giant Walmart isn’t always winning popularity contests for their labor issues and sales of non-American made products. But the reality is that Walmart is a corporate giant that is trying to make a difference by hiring retired U.S. veterans and investing in American manufacturing. Last Thursday, The New York Times featured an opinion piece by Op-Ed Contributing Writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, Timothy Egan, on the “inequality” that exists within Walmart, using coffee giant Starbucks as a example of a company that is doing good by their employees as a basis for comparison.
What Egan didn’t know was that Walmart, and their VP of Corporate Communications, David Tovar, was watching. The Corporate Comm team at Walmart crafted a response like no other – a masterpiece in PR damage control. Highlighting the article in red pen much like your college professor would, Tovar addressed each claim throughout the entire piece, citing sources along the way and signing off “Hope this helps.” (Full red-marked article is shown in full below.)
Blatantly correcting the inaccuracies of an article is not an approach that a lot of companies — even those working with staggering budgets and huge outside global PR firms — often take. Confronting a writer who is spreading negative and inaccurate information about your brand can be risky, but if you do it right, it is well worth it, especially if the facts back up your response. And if you can do it creatively so as to get noticed by the masses, it empowers your brand even more. The response proved to be a big public relations win for Walmart (this article alone was shared over 20,000 times).
Tovar’s creative rebuttal to an OpEd piece that was clearly skewed against Walmart is exactly what Communications professionals and teams should be willing to do when faced with this kind of vilification. Not only did it make the story accurate, but it gave Walmart a voice, and a strong one at that.
View Egan’s original piece (sans red marks) in The New York Times, here.
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