Edelman Membership Put on Review

From the Word of Mouth Marketing Association:

Edelman Membership Put on Review

WOMMA has responded this week to issues of disclosure and ethics surrounding Edelman’s recent blogs for Wal-Mart by placing Edelman’s membership on review. The following letter was forwarded to Richard Edelman and Rick Murray on Monday:

Based on Edelman’s publicly stated actions regarding the Wal-Marting Across America blog, WOMMA has determined that the company has breached the WOMMA Ethics Code — a code that Edelman helped write.

Although you have publicly re-committed to WOMMA’s Ethics Code and have outlined a series of action steps going forward, the WOMMA Board of Directors believes it is necessary to put your membership under a 90-day review.

We ask that you take the following corrective actions, some of which already appear to be in progress:

1. Provide assurances that all inappropriate programs have been stopped.
2. Provide a briefing to the WOMMA Executive Committee to fully explain the details of the incident.
3. Implement a training program to educate all employees on ethical practices and disclosure requirements.
4. Institute systems to prevent violations from happening in the future, and to correct them if they do.
5. Formally participate in upcoming WOMMA ethics programs and comply with all new ethics requirements for members.
6. Please provide detailed documentation of your compliance with the above requests.

Assuming that we see satisfactory progress, we will end the administrative review and restore your membership to full status in 90 days. If we are not satisfied, WOMMA reserves the right to implement additional penalties, including but not limited to: demanding additional corrective action, removal of Governing Member status, removal from the Board of Directors, or expulsion.

Posted by Russ Fagaly on Friday, November 03, 2006

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