Fliers hit Wal-Mart’s plans for Brooklyn

So what do you think? Do you want a Wal-Mart here in Brooklyn?

Calling themselves Wal-Mart No Way, a group of friends, activists and neighbors in Park Slope this week began distributing spoof ads mocking the mega-retailer’s attempts to market itself in Brooklyn.

“The reason we’re going about it this way, is we feel it’s probably the most effective way to get our message across,” said Richard Thomas, who founded the anti-Wal-Mart group.

“It’s the tactic they use,” he said, “and we want to fight them in the same way, basically.”

Last month, Wal-Mart executives expressed interest in finding space in Brooklyn to open what might be its first New York City store. They followed that with a one-week advertising blitz including full-page ads in local newspapers.

Wal-Mart officials have also expressed interest in two sites on Staten Island.
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Thomas said this week that his group would begin distributing a flier that appears to be a direct spoof of the ad Wal-Mart has run in several Brooklyn newspapers, including The Brooklyn Papers.

“People were really surprised by the ads in last week’s paper,” said Thomas, referring to the July 23 ad. “It really brought home to them how serious Wal-Mart was about coming to Brooklyn,” he said. “I think a full-page ad really demonstrated to them the seriousness of this.”

The ad featured a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge and read:

“In Brooklyn, you can get great cheesecake, enjoy Coney Island, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, and do just about anything. The only thing missing is everyday low prices.”

The mock-ad flier is being distributed by Wal-Mart No Way on tables the group has been setting up around the borough to collect signatures for a petition against a Brooklyn Wal-Mart. It uses the same photograph of the bridge, but changes the wording to say:

“In Brooklyn, you can provide for your family, run your own business, enjoy what your community has to offer and do just about anything. Let’s keep it that way. Say NO to Wal-Mart!”

Wal-Mart officials have said the company will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in community newspapers in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island and will also advertise on local radio and television stations.

Last Friday, filming began for Wal-Mart No Way’s first television ad, which may air as early as next month. To raise money to produce the commercial, the group is selling T-shirts, with the Wal-Mart logo and a frowning yellow face. Wal-Mart’s icon is a smiling happy face.

“It’s going to be on [Time Warner Cable news channel] New York 1, and we are hopefully going to get picked up by other media outlets as well, but we’ll be giving it also to anti-Wal-Mart groups and unions for their campaigns. It will be generic to begin with,” Thomas said, so others can use it in different locations, but “the final segment is going to talk about specifically New York City.”

Though it boasts 4,905 stores worldwide, Wal-Mart has not yet tapped into the New York City market. But the retail giant has announced plans to open 300 more stores in the coming fiscal year, including at least one in New York City.

Company executives and their public relations representatives met with a group of Brooklyn newspaper reporters on June 30 to discuss Wal-Marts New York City plans.

Matt Lipsky, communications director for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, an organization that works to unify the anti-Wal-Mart message among unions, women’s groups, anti-sweatshop groups, and what he called “a whole slew of different organizations,” said the work of creating a counter-ad campaign was helpful to his cause, too.

“What they’re doing is very important, because considering the resources that Wal-Mart is going to bring to the air and to the radio it helps to have any type of anti-Wal-Mart message,” said Lipsky.

“It’s our opinion that this campaign is going to be won and lost on the ground, and that’s where we think we’re the strongest.”