Seat at the Table

The AP reports on a Wal-Mart commissioned study that shows all the negative publicity around Wal-Mart has had no substantial effect on the number of people who shop at Wal-Mart.  I’m not surprised at these findings for several reasons:

1. Shoppers just don’t care about corporate reputation.  People buy because they like the product and trust the store they buy from.  Just about all the attacks on Wal-Mart (e.g., by watch dog groups, unions) were unrelated to these core areas of consumer interest.  We hear about the terrible behavior of diamond companies but still buy plenty of diamonds.  Basically, unless the product is  overpriced, broken or comes with terrible service, shoppers are less likely to shift their habits.

2. Wal-Mart aggressively got it’s story out.  After being attacked on core issues like health care and wages, Wal-Mart showed they were far better than average on these two issues than most other companies.  Maybe they weren’t the best, but they were far from worse.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of conscientious shoppers made note of these facts.

3. Wal-Mart had their employees tell their story.  Instead of corporate spokespeople, Wal-Mart had employees talk about how they liked working for the company in commercials.  This is one of the fastest ways to neutralize the opposition.  Show how at least some of the audience they claim to speak for is on your side.  It immediately questions how much support they really have.  I once worked on a campaign where we faced the teachers union.  We ran commercials featuring teachers speaking out against the teachers union messages.  We saw an immediate shift of support to our side of the issue.

So does this mean all that negative publicity doesn’t matter?  Absolutely not.  Overtime, I still believe corporate level negative publicity can erode both shopper and investor confidence as well as lost politicy support (as Wal-Mart has already seen).   I think survey’s like this show that it’s not necessarily an immediate effect and may also be a sign of success of Wal-Marts communications program to defend against attacks.