Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville has begun a national television and online marketing campaign focusing on how the company not only helps customers save money, but also provides “tremendous career opportunities.”
The campaign is aimed at attracting shoppers who rarely, if ever, shop at the world’s largest retailer. Industry research shows that about 60 percent ofU.S. households already shop at Wal-Mart on a regular basis.
“This is directed at those folks who do not shop our stores every week and every month,” said Brook Buchanan, a Wal-Mart spokesman. “Once people know a little more about us, they will be more likely to shop our stores.”
The campaign, dubbed “The Real Wal-Mart,” began in late April and will run “for the foreseeable future,” Buchanan said, adding that the retailer’s employees are as much a target of the campaign as are shoppers.
“Anytime we can speak directly to our associates, it’s a plus,” she said. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million people in its U.S. operations and about 2.2 million globally.
The Lighthouse Group, based in Panama City, Fla., helped develop the campaign. Among the firm’s other recent clients is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is promoting a national gun-control initiative.
Kathleen Thompson, 49, a department manager for stationery, fabrics and crafts at Wal-Mart’s Pleasant Crossing store in south Rogers, said she started working at Wal-Mart in December 1997 as a temporary Christmas season employee but soon was given full-time status. Shortly after that, she said, her husband was injured in an on-the-job accident, causing them to deplete their savings.
Wal-Mart worked with her, she said, offering a 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. schedule that enabled her to be home by the time her children got off the school bus.
“There have been [job] opportunities for home office or supervisor,” she said. “It’s worked out great for me. The health-care benefits, I think they’re awesome.”
When her daughter sustained a retinal detachment requiring emergency surgery in St. Louis, she said, co-workers paid for the girl’s glasses. “It was a couple hundred dollars,” she said.
Claudia Mobley, director of the Center for Retailing Excellence at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said the retail industry has, in the last 20 years, moved to align itself with charitable activities that don’t just promote their business, and to dispel notions of retail work as a dead-end job.
“There are a lot of people employed in retail and glad to be making a living wage,” she said.
Still, she said, there is a widely held perception that retail is a low-wage job. That’s true at the entry level, she said, but the opportunity exists to move up the chain to six-figure salaries.
“It’s a huge piece of our economy,” she said.
Initiatives such as those Wal-Mart has undertaken can make a big difference, Mobley said, because “part of what you’re selling is your brand image.”
However, Wal-Mart continues to be a target of criticism, in particular from union-funded groups that contend the company does not pay sufficient wages.
One of those groups, OUR Walmart, released a statement from a member, Barbara Andridge, a mother of two from Placerville, Calif.
“I love working at Wal-Mart because I love my co-workers and my customers. But the picture the company is painting in these ads isn’t the experience that many of us are having as Wal-Mart associates,” she said. “Even though I’m supposed to work full time, Wal-Mart has cut my hours to the point where I can no longer afford health care. And after nearly eight years at the company, Ihave to rely on public assistance to keep food on the table for my kids and a roof over our heads.”
OURWalmart’s website is at forrespect.org.
In a video posted on therealwalmart.com website, Nathaniel Williams, a 19-year-oldWal-Mart employee in Chicago, talks about liking his job in the store’s garden department, despite a two-hour daily commute to work. He said he is saving money to return to college and plans to major in a technology field or in law, and hopes to take advantage of the education benefits Wal-Mart offers.
He sees himself reaching the store manager level at some point, “or maybe even going to corporate.”
Erin Ott, who manages a Wal-Mart store in Gilbert, Ariz., said her store has about$70 million in annual sales.
“There is so much opportunity at Wal-Mart,” she said. “If that takes me overseas, or if that takes me to corporate in Bentonville, or if it’s best where I am right now, that’s OK,” she said. “I get to learn new things every day.”
Business, Pages 67 on 05/12/2013