Wal-Mart’s Guide to Questionable PR Tactics

by Jason at 7:00 am on October 31st, 2005 in General

You’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.

Or maybe not:

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?

Comments

  1. 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?

  2. 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/)

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*

*