Today we salute the dumbest corporation in America last year.
Walmart. CNN has put together their list of the dumbest business moves of 06 and wal mart topped the list. Here is sprawl-marts 6 biggest mistakes of the year
1. Bad PR move. Dubbing its campaign "Candidate Wal-Mart," the firm trumpets all manner of new Wal-Mart initiatives: improved employee health-care benefits, higher starting pay levels, new stores in downtrodden neighborhoods, reasonably priced organic foods, and a flat $4 fee for hundreds of generic prescription drugs. As a result, candidate Wal-Mart quickly becomes, well, the most popular politician since Spiro Agnew. By year's end Wal-Mart suffers its first quarterly profit drop in a decade, sees same-store sales decline in November's run-up to the crucial holiday shopping season, and suffers a series of public relations gaffes so stunning that it lands six spots in this year's edition of the 101 Dumbest Moments.
2. Then they hire civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young to chair its company-funded Working Families for Wal-Mart. Then he says "You see, those are the people who have been overcharging us.... I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs"
He explains that Wal-Mart should shut down every little corner store
3. Former Wal-Mart vice chairman Thomas Coughlin made millions of dollars a year,but that didn't stop him from siphoning off 500,000 more. He told his subordinates that he was using the money in an anti union campaign.
4. In September new blog called Wal-Marting Across America pops up on the Internet.
It was supposedly documented spontaneous discoveries of RV-traveling megastore megafans Jim and Laura as they pull over to chat with happy Wal-Mart employees, like the guy whose company health insurance saved his son's life, or the woman who worked her way up from cashier to corporate manager.
Unfortunately, it neglects to mention that Wal-Mart arranged Jim and Laura's itinerary, paid for the RV, and compensated them for the blog entries. Exposed by BusinessWeek.com, the stunt is especially bad news for Edelman, since it violates ethical guidelines it helped to write for the nascent Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
5. In December, six weeks after hiring Interpublic Group's DraftFCB as its new advertising agency, Wal-Mart fires both Draft and Wal-Mart senior vice president Julie Roehm, who led the agency search.
Roehm reportedly attended an expensive dinner paid for by Draft at a hip Manhattan restaurant, in violation of a Wal-Mart policy that prohibits employees from accepting gifts from vendors.
The move is expected to delay Wal-Mart's efforts to shift from a mass advertising strategy to one that tailors pitches to specific demographic groups, seen as key to reversing its slumping sales.
6. Lastly To bringing the ever-friendly spirit of its in-store greeters online, Walmart.com offers DVD shoppers helpful recommendations for films they might be interested in purchasing.
Customers looking at the Web site's product pages for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes, for instance, are steered toward "similar items" such as Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream/Assassination of MLK and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams says the company is "heartsick" over the incident but has "absolutely no evidence" that the connections were made intentionally.
Link to walmarts worstlink to the 101 dumbest moments Lastly something a little more fun
the ending is spectacular
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