Walmart Saga Motivates Lawyers To Phone The Bloggers
I get to go nose-to-nose with some really good corporate lawyers who want to better understand what their bloggers and/or marketing and/or communications teams are planning to unleash on-line.
John Slafsky, a partner at Wilson Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosatti, the powerhouse law firm that represents Sun, Google, Netflicks and HP warned me early on that “as enterprise blogging grows people will get into trouble from time-to-time…” Luckily I have not been spanked by a lawyer to date for any of our projects.
Mostly I’ve been surprised about how closely we are aligned on the intent and spirit of digital media initiatives. We sometimes haggle over language, but generally we can agree about being honest and transparent (I should knock on wood because I also have heard a few horror stories from pharma industry executives who work with lawyers who are afraid to even look on-line).
Tonight one of my lawyer friends called me just to ensure herself that I was not helping her company “pull any Walmarts…” She and I can both go to sleep tonight knowing we have not.
Some of you will remember the issue we faced over the summer when one of our interns anonymously unleashed his frustration on Jeff Jarvis. It triggered an immediate review of our code of ethics with all our employees. But Edelman’s slip-up has reminded me that it is really important to review what we can and can’t do with all employees periodically.
Tomorrow I will reiterate our code of ethics to both clients and GCI consultants and point them to WOMMA’s well-articulated statement on the Edelman crisis. I’d encourage all executives managing on-line programs to do the same.
UPDATE: Edelman admitted to two more fake blogs for Walmart.
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