Friday, December 08, 2006

The inevitability of Crisis - Wal-Mart

So it is becoming more and more public. After fake blogs, Andrew Young, a spokesman, putting down ethnic minorities, and continued missteps in its treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has a very public firing of a Senior Vice President of Marketing communications. The company hired her to shake up the culture, and it is clear that she did so. Whatever the rights and wrongs of her firing, it was handled clumsily, amid accusations of malfeasance. It seems that Wal-Mart has become tone deaf to society and the media. She had just hired a new advertising agency, with 10 executives voting to hire them, and now Wal-Mart has fired it, even though it has started hiring people to staff the account. So clumsy. The company has to catch its breath and think through its actions thoroughly before it pulls the trigger.

At this stage, I do not see it getting better. Competition is getting tougher, and the pressure is intensifying.

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