Wal-Mart sent out a press release yesterday claiming to help small businesses. That’s just rubbing it in a little, don’t you think?

Sam’s Club Savings Drive To Help America’s Small Businesses Succeed [Wal-Mart Press Release]:

Sam’s Club is fighting for America’s small business owners and operators and beginning today, thousands of associates from all of its 600 clubs across the country are committing to visit 100,000 small businesses to help them identify ways they can lower their costs and succeed. The Sam’s Club Small Business Savings Drive is part of a campaign that culminates during National Small Business Week May 22. Associates are working for small business owners to find at least $270 million in savings by comparing the prices of similar business related products to items available at Sam’s Club.

And last week in the Wall Street Journal...

When a Wal-Mart comes to town, trying to compete with the big-box store by reducing prices does not help, concludes a two-year study by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University in Hanover, N.H.

The study found that after a new Wal-Mart store opened, local supermarkets in seven regions of the U.S. suffered sales declines of 17%, while mass merchandisers saw sales fall 40% and drug stores saw a 6% decline in sales.

read more on Wal-Mart’s effect on local business here and here.

Wal-Mart and Mike Duke are making no secret that they want to be a player in the discussion over health care reform, and that they want to be viewed as a positive force in health care. For several years, Wal-Mart has been signaling support for large-scale government health care reform. Yesterday the company took its pitch directly to Congress with a full page ad in the highly influential D.C. daily, Roll Call. The ad declares support for health care reform and outlines Wal-Mart’s “health care principles”. Among them are:

Every person in America must have quality, affordable health insurance.

Businesses, individuals and government must share the responsibility for financing and managing the American health care system

It’s the same thing we’ve always said at Wal-Mart Watch. It’s great if Wal-Mart wants to encourage the government to build a better health care system, but it needs to get its own house in order first.

Wal-Mart is the single biggest private employer in the country - with over 1.4 million “associates.” And while it brags that 94% of its workers are insured, only 51.8% are on Wal-Mart’s plan. That means that almost as many workers have found a better plan somewhere else - whether it’s from the government, a spouse, or somewhere else. Those who are on the company plan are forced to live with extremely high deductibles - which is not easy on poverty-level wages.

Given its multi-billion dollar profits and the extravagant wealth of its controlling family, Wal-Mart has the singular ability to lead by example - and truly invest the necessary funds into the health of its workforce. Instead, it has chosen the path of smoke, mirrors and expensive PR.

Click here to see the the full ad from Roll Call. 

Mike Duke is wasting no time putting his stamp on Wal-Mart.

In a time when workers everywhere are struggling through the recession while Wal-Mart eats market share and makes billions, and pro-Wal-Mart flakkery is printed every day in the media, the company has decided on a prescription: more PR.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Wal-Mart apparently no longer thinks Edelman can handle the full load, and is looking to bring on up to five additional public relations firms. The WSJ looked at internal Wal-Mart documents and found that the company feels it needs more spin in order to lock down the gains it has made during the recession.

It’s unclear as of yet how much of slap the move is to Edelman. Perhaps the company truly thinks it needssix PR firms hock its products and defend against bad press. But we do know that we need to be on guard - more than ever - against Wal-Mart spin. 

Wal-Mart Seeks to Hold Gains With Expanded Focus on PR [Wall Street Journal]:

In a sign that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to capitalize on its sales strength in the recession, the retailer is in the process of hiring five public relations firms to better promote its products, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer plans to put the firms on retainer and then have them bid on individual projects, an effort by the notoriously frugal retailer to contain costs. This strategy is becoming more common in the advertising industry as businesses attempt to rein in marketing budgets amid falling revenues.

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After dragging its feet for months, Wal-Mart has finally decided to make good on its promise to donate to the earthquake relief in Sichuan, China by actually donating something!  On October 26, Wal-Mart held a donation ceremony (pictured on the right) to donate 2,566,000RMB (about $375,000) worth of ambulances and medical supplies to 20 different organizations in several cities throughout Sichuan.  And never one to miss out on publicity, Wal-Mart has even tagged the ambulances with the Wal-Mart brand (pictured after the jump).

Since the 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Sichuan in May, Wal-Mart has been plagued by criticism for its relatively low donation to the earthquake relief and Wal-Mart’s failure to live up to said donations.  Wal-Mart China’s PR director, Jonathan Dong, has been working overtime defending the company’s image - even writing to Wal-Mart Watch, imploring us not to spread negative stories about Wal-Mart’s donation fiasco. Asked why Wal-Mart hadn’t fulfilled its donation pledge, Dong stated that spending money is difficult! Fortunately for Mr. Dong, it looks like this problem may finally be ending.

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Looks like another online advertising debacle for Bentonville. Valleywag has posted a screenshot today of a Walmart.com banner ad on a white supremacist’s anti-Obama blog. In all likelihood, the ad appeared on the blog through a third party company called Linkshare, which places similar ads all over the internet. It appears to have since been removed, and Valleywag quotes Wal-Mart as having told them it is “investigating this matter.”

Needless to say, Wal-Mart and Linkshare might want to start paying a little more attention to the blog vetting process…

*(H/T Jonathan Rees)

The local food movement has energetically spread across the United States in the last few years, spurring activist consumers to support local farms, shop at farmers markets and take pride in regional produce. The movement’s popularity hasn’t escaped the eyes of public relations executives - and Wal-Mart is eager to get in on the action.

Despite the fact that only a fraction of Wal-Mart’s produce is grown locally, the mammoth retailer has been quick to take credit for the small amount of local produce it DOES sell. BloggingStocks advises that this isn’t really important. According to the column, what Wal-Mart really needs is more P.R.

This has been a recurring theme in Wal-Mart’s environmental program. What small steps the retailer does make are inevitably blown all out of proportion by the company’s marketing department, making genuine analysis difficult. Wal-Mart’s publicity around local sourcing distracts from the fact that the retailer - the largest grocer in North America - sources the vast majority of its food from industrial producers. A vital part of “Buying Local” means not only supporting small farmers, but also supporting businesses that invest in the community, which Wal-Mart certainly fails to do. Want to support local farms and farmers markets? Go directly to the source. It’s better for the environment AND your community.

Wal-Mart stages marketing appearance to promote locally-grown produce [BloggingStocks]

Not too long ago, I wrote about Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and the entrance of the world’s largest retailer more heavily into locally-grown fresh produce. As a way of differentiating itself, Wal-Mart is really on the right track here. Partnering with local merchants near each community it serves could help repair the rift between small-town merchants and the retailing behemoth that has steadily grown for the last two decades.

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