Wal-Mart’s Guide to Questionable PR Tactics
by Jason at 7:00 am on October 31st, 2005 in GeneralYou’ve just taken on the credibility of Fox News with a successful low-budget documentary. What do you do for an encore? Well, if you are Outfoxed director Robert Greenwald, you set your sights on everyone’s favorite retailer, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price premiers this week with over 6,800 coordinated screenings at locations including house parties and churches.
As you can imagine, Wal-Mart is none too pleased. So it is fighting back with an “aggressive” public relations plan that is sure to send Greenwald running home like a scared little boy.
Five days before the movie’s scheduled premiere in New York on Tuesday, Wal-Mart released a 10-page press release criticizing it as “propaganda video.” The missive dusted off three pages of negative reviews of Greenwald’s nonpolitical films, including a 25-year-old Newsweek thumbs-down for the Newton-John dud “Xanadu,” which said, “Robert Greenwald, the director, should look into another line of work.”
Somehow this tactic seems less than impressive. What’s next, egging his house?
screwtape wrote:
Xanadu was one of the most influential films in the developing years of young Screwtape. It took many year to get over my fetish for thin, pretty women in leg-warmers and roller skates. I listened to the LP probably 150 times that summer. ELO is still one of my all-time favorite groups.
Was I the only one to recognize Greenwald’s genius so long ago?
Posted 31 Oct 2005 at 9:45 am ¶
Jason wrote:
Funny, I felt the same away about Hear No Evil, which set the stage for the dozens of weak imitations about deaf women fighting corrupt cops. A thriller without peer!
(http://imdb.com/title/tt0107090/)
Posted 31 Oct 2005 at 11:26 am ¶