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After almost a week of uproar in the blogosphere, CEO Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel posted brief entries on their blogs about the fiasco with the Wal-Marting Across America blog a few days ago.

Answering other bloggers such as Duncan Riley, who posted an open letter asking for some response, Rubel said in his post:

I am sorry I could not speak about this sooner. I had no personal role in this project. There is a process in place that I had to let proceed through its course. This is why it took some time.

Edelman’s own post seemed sincere, if short. He acknowledged that the company had made a mistake, and worse, not adhered to the WOMMA (Word Of Mouth Marketing Association) code of ethics that his company had a hand in creating.

I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client’s.

Robert Scoble, well-known tech blogger, says that’s good enough for him. I’m not so sure. But I don’t know if any more explanation or information will be forthcoming anyway, so I suppose that’s that.

Still, I wonder what’s the best thing to do — give a little more insight into how this happened, or just offer your apology and move on? I’d love to know more about how the whole train-wreck happened — how the decisions were made; what was the thought process behind the whole thing. I’m not the only one left wondering.

It’s only been a week, but it seems much longer, somehow. Especially when there was complete silence on the subject from such a prolific blogger as Steve Rubel.

But, for Edelman the company, there’s a client involved here, and one thing I know is that for consultants, the client gets all the credit and the consultant gets all the blame. That’s just how the game is played. So outsiders will probably never know the full story.

Richard Edelman’s apology was well-crafted — he briefly explained the problem, accepted the blame, and stated his support of the WOMMA code of ethics.

One thing I found fascinating about all this is how well trackbacks worked to help stitch together pieces of the conversation. Following the trail from both Rubel and Edelman’s blog, I found a wealth of sound insight. For PR folks, it’s well worth taking the time to read the blogosphere’s take. For example, I completely agree with Ian Delaney, who astutely writes …

…it seems that the irony of social media champions being caught undermining their big play is far, far more interesting than a company with a bad reputation continuing to do bad things. Ultimately, I think a lot of people will react like me, so good call by Edelman for putting his hands up.

And after all, as he goes on to say, “no one died, broke the law, or got pregnant.”

‘Nuff said?

Related Post: Wal-Mart’s Blogging Fiasco

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