Media and Mayhem

I don’t like to be spun.

I don’t like incomplete answers from companies that have been asked to clarify something by their customers. When done well and ethically, corporate communications is an important and valuable function in which a company exercises its right to free expression, promotes its good deeds, spins its bad deeds, and makes its case against what it feels are scurrilous attacks.

So what’s with the flack-speak from Home Depot that took place in the comment section of my last post on Media and Mayhem?

One July 23, at 5:02 PM, a woman named Sarah saying she was from Home Depot communications sent the following comment to Media and Mayhem:

“The Home Depot does not currently advertise on The Michael Savage Show, nor do we have any kind of sponsorship in place with the program. Again, we do not advertise with this program and any suggestion of such support is false.” Sarah, Home Depot Communications

Aside from the bafflingly amateurish corporate communications blunder of not telling me her last name so questions could then be directed to her, I was pretty relieved. I answered with this comment:

As a fan of Home Depot and frequent customer, I am thrilled that this is the case. Do you have any idea how an ad might have been broadcast? Might it have been a local ad that was not tied to the Savage broadcast but was broadcast at the same time on the radio station of the person who listened and recorded the advertisers?

No answer from Sarah “No Last Name.” Nothing.

I tried again at 6:01 PM:

One last try: Sarah, I have no reason not to believe you. But given the widespread stories on various wire services that Home Depot did advertise and then pulled those ads, I wonder if you can tell me whether this is true, i.e, that Home Depot did advertise through TRN but no longer does. Or are you saying Home Depot never did?

Still no answer.

So look what you did: Now you have me, a big fan of the store, even more confused about the facts of Home Depot’s past, present, and future relationship with TRN, the entity that syndicates Michael Savage. And this is just what happens when public statements from a company in the middle of a crisis like this are muddled, unclear and or perhaps even consciously trying to be vague. This could have already been over for them.

And we still do not know Home Depot’s history with TRN and/or the Savage show. We do know, and I accept their public statement, that they do not now have any sponsorship arrangements with Savage.

But barring an answer to the following question, and given no answer from Sarah, I consider the question of Home Depot’s past involvement to still be open, and my patronage to be suspended.

Dear Any Home Depot Corporate Communications Exec with a Last Name:

You have publicly stated that you “do not you currently advertise on The Michael Savage Show, nor do you have any kind of sponsorship in place with the program.”

Fair enough. Better than fair. But here is the question:

Today Radio Shack issued a statement stating that they are not a sponsor of the Michael Savage radio show. In fact, their agreement with the radio network airing his show specifically excludes his program (along with several others) as one on which our commercials may appear.”

Did Home Depot ever have an arrangement with the Talk Radio Network (TRN)?

Did Home Depot have an agreement with TRN at any time this month?

And most importantly, if Home Depot had an agreement up to some point at which it chose to end that agreement, did the previous agreement – like Radio Shack’s admirable contract – have an clause with TRN that specifically excluded Michael Savage as a show on which your ads could appear?.

This isn’t nitpicking. The primary corporate statement you issued consciously and bumblingly glossed over the question of Home Depot’s history with TRN and attempted to imply that there has been no association with them.

That may be true. I want to know.