How BSD Turned Up the Heat on Wal-Mart

The ability to quickly and effectively respond to a breaking situation is one of the things that makes the Internet such a powerful channel for advocacy.

So when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, could continue to squeeze the family of a brain-damaged former employee to recover nearly half a million dollars that its health plan spent on her care, Wal-Mart Watch and Blue State Digital sprung into action.

The goal here was simple: raise the volume. If we could get enough people talking about how Wal-Mart was treating Debbie Shank and her family, we could essentially shame its top executives into dropping their claim to the trust fund.

And that's exactly what we did. We crafted and deployed a strategy designed to apply pressure from multiple perspectives:

• We got Wal-Mart Watch's supporters to sign a petition and then invite their friends to sign.
• We quickly rolled out a sponsored-search campaign at Google and Yahoo, and a display ad campaign on Facebook.
• We gave them the ability to lobby national news outlets to investigate the way Wal-Mart treats its employees.
• We organized a Facebook group and coordinated with groups run by others so they had the most current information.
• We even gave supporters the tools to e-mail Wal-Mart's top executives directly and urge them to release the Shanks' money.

We wanted to be sure that Wal-Mart management heard about the country's outrage from as many directions as possible - in its stores, on on television, in the newspaper, in e-mail - and it worked.

Wal-Mart quickly agreed to release its claim on the Shanks' settlement ... and Wal-Mart Watch's supporters even kicked in an additional $7,500 to help out.

We're putting together a case study about how Blue State helped Wal-Mart Watch and the Shank family win its David vs. Goliath struggle, so watch this space for more.