You can't please everybody all the time...
Advertising Age reported yesterday that Wal-Mart has joined the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and has also hired Witeck-Combs Communications to work on targeting communications to the gay and lesbian consumer market. The PR and marketing group specializes in communications to the GLBT community and past clients include Ford, Motorola, and American Airlines.
It'll be interesting to see what the fall-out (or judgement?) may be from the conservative, activist community, particularly from the American Family Association, whose protests against Ford helped force the company to revise and, in some instances, pull advertisements from gay magazine titles like The Advocate (although Ford has resumed advertising since) late last year. Some of the contested ads were produced by Witeck-Combs. Meanwhile, the AFA is still calling for a boycott of Ford vehicles and has rallied thousands to its message (the AFA website says over 500,000 people have signed the boycott petition). Will they call for a boycott of Wal-Mart? And will Wal-Mart emerge from its "no comment" stance to respond?
