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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Edelman’s WOMMA membership under review

In an earlier post about the Edelman/Wal-Mart flog story, I noted that my friend Constantin Bastureaq wondered of The Word of Mouth Marketing Association might not become the big story for its lack of action given Edelman’s violation of the WOMMA code of ethics.

On November 1, WOMMA took such action, sending a letter to Richard Edelman and Rick Murray and posting it to their website:

Based on Edelman???s publicly stated actions regarding the Wal-Marting Across America blog, WOMMA has determined that the company has breached the WOMMA Ethics Code ??? a code that Edelman helped write.

Although you have publicly re-committed to WOMMA???s Ethics Code and have outlined a series of action steps going forward, the WOMMA Board of Directors believes it is necessary to put your membership under a 90-day review.

The letter outlines corrective action Edelman needs to take, including implementing training programs and internal systems to ensure there is no repeat of the ethical breach, participation in upcoming WOMMA ethics programs, and submission of detailed documentation of compliance with all five requirements.

Compliance will result in restoration of Edelman’s full membership, according to the notice. Failure could lead to additional action, including expulsion.

It’s easy to criticize WOMMA for the time it took before taking this action, but it’s important to remember that it is a volunteer group—and a new one at that—and volunteer groups operate under a concensus model. Getting the right players together to hash through the issues is a time-consuming task. (I spent six years on IABC‘s international executive board; I know how ponderously these groups work.) Ultimately, though, WOMMA has taken action that more established organizations like PRSA—which had an opportunity during Ketchumgate—never find the fortitude to take in defense of their own codes of ethics. WOMMA may have been slow, but they were true to their code.

Hat tip to Tony Hung.

11/02/06 | 2 Comments | Edelman’s WOMMA membership under review

Comments

  • 1.Encouraging news which bring two thoughts to mind. First, as you noted WOMMA gets credit in my book for taking a courageous and leadership stand to demonstrate commitment and importance of its code of ethics.


    What's especially noteworthy is the board took this action despite Edelman being a key and contributing member of the organization. How many times in the past 20 years when opportunities have arisen for IABC, PRSA, etc., to take similar leadership stands have we heard excuses instead of why it would be inappropriate or ineffective to take action? (The most egregious, IMHO, was when Tony Franco, PRSA president, was indicted by the SEC for insider trading of a client?s stock in the mid-1998?s with nary a peep coming out of NYC).


    Second, while I agree that consensus among a volunteer organization used to be time-consuming and laborious, today?s accessibility of communication and collaboration tools (like Go-To-Meeting for example ? like how I worked in a plug for your sponsor? <G>) negates that excuse now. Especially for an issue this important and, realistically, which occurs very infrequently.

    Part of the governance of volunteer organizations should be standard procedures, with expected timelines for responding/decision-making, related to important matters. Certainly, issues with the code of ethics would fit the bill.


    As the Edleman/Walmart story started breaking, board members could have been alerted that this was an issue that potentially needed quick consensus and a decision. A quick conference call/net meeting of the board (or ethics committee) could be convened (and recorded for those who couldn?t attend to stay up-to-speed) to review what was known and outline several possible scenarios depending upon how things unfolded.


    Members could have been directed to monitor events through setting up RSS feeds of news sites, blogs, etc., and could have been interacting with one another online. Within a short period of time there would have been enough information for the board to make a decision, again which could be handled through a conference call/net meeting with actions steps, communication plan, etc. nailed down.


    In 2001 I ran a session at the CCM national conference in which we developed a crisis strategy and communication plan around a simulated global situation, in 3 hours, between the 40 attendees in Washington D.C., a PR firm in Boston, and three communications leaders, one in Regina, Saskatchewan and two in Vancouver, British Columbia. This was done in real-time using web collaboration, phone conferencing, file sharing and document management. The only thing I couldn?t get to work because of bandwidth issues was video conferencing but it really didn?t matter.


    Other than the expense for phone conferencing, much of what we did in 2001 could be replicated today with free tools now readily available.

    Craig Jolley | November 2006

  • 2.Oops! Just noticed a typo in my post. The Franco/PRSA debacle occurred circa 1985 - 1986, not 1998.

    Craig Jolley | November 2006

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