seriously who do they have working for these companies!

All of these stories were copied and pasted from CNNmoney.com in the Business 2.0 section:

Northwest Airlines
And don't forget, you only need one kidney...
In July, bankrupt Northwest Airlines begins laying off thousands of ground workers, but not before issuing some of them a handy guide, "101 Ways to Save Money."

The advice includes dumpster diving ("Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash"), making your own baby food, shredding old newspapers for use as cat litter, and taking walks in the woods as a low-cost dating alternative.

General Motors
Then again, viral marketing can be screwed up in English too...
As part of a cross promotion with the NBC TV show The Apprentice, GM launches a contest to promote its Chevy Tahoe SUV. At Chevyapprentice.com, viewers are given video and music clips with which to create their own 30-second commercials.

Among the new Tahoe ads that soon proliferate across the Web are ones with taglines like "Yesterday's technology today" and "Global warming isn't a pretty SUV ad - it's a frightening reality."

Kazakhstan
Throw the cash down the well...
Amid efforts by Kazakhstan to prove it's not the backward land portrayed in the movie Borat, the nation's central bank misspells the Kazakh word for "bank" on its 2,000- and 5,000-tenge notes.

Rising Sun Anger Release Bar
You're telling us!
"The idea of beating someone decorated as your boss seems very attractive."

- Chinese salesman Chen Liang, on the newly opened Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing. Bar patrons are invited to rant, curse, smash drinking glasses, and even beat workers equipped with protective gear and dressed as the target of their wrath.

Fiji Water
Crisp. Refreshing. And only ever-so-slightly poisonous...
Los Angeles-based Fiji Water runs magazine ads for its bottled water with the headline "The Label Says Fiji Because It's Not Bottled in Cleveland."

Cleveland officials retaliate by running tests revealing that Fiji bottled water contains 6.3 micrograms of arsenic per liter, while the city's tap water has none.

Fiji counters by saying its own tests found less than 2 micrograms per liter.

Heart Attack Grill
Goes great with a small Diet Coke...
The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Ariz., introduces the Quadruple Bypass Burger, featuring 2 pounds of beef, four layers of cheese, 12 slices of bacon, and 8,000 calories.

As a side dish: Flatliner Fries, cooked in lard. A Triple Bypass is also available.

Golden State Warriors
Please escort Eric to the locker room. Some of his 6-foot-10, 260-pound colleagues would like to have a word with him...
Eric Govan, PR manager for the NBA's Golden State Warriors, sends an e-mail titled "Ghetto Prom" -- featuring photos of black people in formal attire and commentary denigrating the outfits -- to the team's entire media distribution list.

Govan is summarily fired.

Sony
Mighty white of you...
Sony runs a billboard campaign in the Netherlands depicting a Caucasian model rudely gripping the jaw of a woman of African descent to promote its PlayStation Portable in "ceramic white."

Sony initially defends the campaign, saying it was meant to "highlight the whiteness of the new model," but later apologizes.

Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York
Crackheads all cracked up on crack...
Entrepreneurs David Singletary and Milton Greagory begin selling Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York DVDs for $10 in New York's Harlem neighborhood.

"It's basically a drug-awareness video," says Singletary, a former crack dealer.

The thriving business rakes in $2,500 a week at a single table across from the Apollo Theater.

Tesco"Mom, Kelsey's hogging the stripper pole again!"
"Unleash the sex kitten inside ... soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars."

- From a product listing by $75 billion British retailer Tesco, plugging the $100 Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit - which includes an 8.5-foot chrome pole, a "sexy dance garter," and play money for stuffing into said garter - in the Toys & Games section of its website.

After complaints from parent groups, Tesco decides to keep selling the item as a "fitness accessory" but agrees to remove the listing from the toy section.

Spin Master
Customers who bought the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit also purchased this item...
Toymaker Spin Master releases the I-Tattoo, a $15 kit for kids ages 6 and up that features a "realistic, vibrating tattoo pen" and instructs youngsters to "get ready to 'get inked.'"

Hasbro
Customers who bought the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit and the I-Tattoo probably would've been clueless enough to buy this one too...
To compete with the spectacularly successful Bratz doll phenomenon, Hasbro unveils plans to launch the Pussycat Dolls, aimed at girls as young as 8 years old and modeled after the risqué, burlesque-inspired pop group of the same name.

(Yes, the "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me" Pussycat Dolls.)

After protests by parent groups, Hasbro nixes the line

Wal-Mart PR Bloopers

Thought this might interest some people or make some people laugh....Out of the 101 Dumbest Moments In Business according to CNNMoney, Wal-Mart landed six spots. Number 4 on my list is the what the public relations world has been hearing about the most.

Because if there's anything America loves, it's a politician...
In an attempt to put a smiley face on its tarnished image, Wal-Mart hires heavy-hitting public relations firm Edelman, which sets about using tactics derived from political races to reverse public perceptions of the giant retailer.

Dubbing its campaign "Candidate Wal-Mart," the firm trumpets all manner of new Wal-Mart initiatives: improved employee health-care benefits, higher starting pay levels, new stores in downtrodden neighborhoods, reasonably priced organic foods, and a flat $4 fee for hundreds of generic prescription drugs.

As a result, candidate Wal-Mart quickly becomes, well, the most popular politician since Spiro Agnew. By year's end Wal-Mart suffers its first quarterly profit drop in a decade, sees same-store sales decline in November's run-up to the crucial holiday shopping season, and suffers a series of public relations gaffes so stunning that it lands six spots in this year's edition of the 101 Dumbest Moments.

Perhaps Michael Richards will be able to find work after all...
Availing itself of PR firm Edelman's deep political connections, Wal-Mart recruits civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young to chair its company-funded Working Families for Wal-Mart.

In an August interview with an African American newspaper in Los Angeles, Young says the megaretailer "should" displace its urban corner-store competition.

"You see, those are the people who have been overcharging us.... I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs."

We hear Lonelygirl15 is a huge fan of Sam's Club...
In September a folksy new blog called Wal-Marting Across America pops up on the Internet.

The blog documents the purportedly spontaneous discoveries of RV-traveling megastore megafans Jim and Laura as they pull over to chat with happy Wal-Mart employees, like the guy whose company health insurance saved his son's life, or the woman who worked her way up from cashier to corporate manager.

Unfortunately, it neglects to mention that Wal-Mart arranged Jim and Laura's itinerary, paid for the RV, and compensated them for the blog entries. Exposed by BusinessWeek.com, the stunt is especially bad news for Edelman, since it violates ethical guidelines it helped to write for the nascent Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Cutting off your nose to spite your smiley face...
In December, six weeks after hiring Interpublic Group's DraftFCB as its new advertising agency, Wal-Mart fires both Draft and Wal-Mart senior vice president Julie Roehm, who led the agency search.

Roehm reportedly attended an expensive dinner paid for by Draft at a hip Manhattan restaurant, in violation of a Wal-Mart policy that prohibits employees from accepting gifts from vendors.

The move is expected to delay Wal-Mart's efforts to shift from a mass advertising strategy to one that tailors pitches to specific demographic groups, seen as key to reversing its slumping sales.

Don't worry, Andrew Young explained it to us. It's some sort of Jewish/Korean/Arab conspiracy...
Bringing the ever-friendly spirit of its in-store greeters online, Walmart.com offers DVD shoppers helpful recommendations for films they might be interested in purchasing.

Customers looking at the Web site's product pages for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes, for instance, are steered toward "similar items" such as Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream/Assassination of MLK and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams says the company is "heartsick" over the incident but has "absolutely no evidence" that the connections were made intentionally.

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