On a Friday in June 2013, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson and John Legend performed before a crowd of 14,000 in a Fayetteville, Ark., college sports arena.
Hugh Jackman hosted the event, and Tom Cruise was on hand to give a speech. But this wasn’t a concert or award ceremony — it was a shareholders’ meeting and employee rally for retail giant Walmart.
Associates from around the world represented the multicultural face of the retail giant that employs 2.2 million people internationally. MCs with microphones asked for “shout outs” from Walmart sales associates from China, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Japan, India, Africa and Canada. The event was electric, video footage shows, as those in attendance appeared to illustrate through their enthusiasm that Walmart is a great place to work.
Walmart’s annual meetings always feature a lineup of A-list celebrities who host, perform and generally extol the virtues of the Arkansas-based company before thousands of cheering employees, shareholders and board members. Black performers at such events have included legends such as Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson and Patti LaBelle, beloved groups such as Take 6 and the Black Eyed Peas and current solo stars Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Jordin Sparks and the reigning R&B diva herself, Beyoncé.
Queen Latifah hosted the event in 2008, and Will Smith — who performed in 2005 — handled hosting duties in 2011. The meetings have even featured the comedy stylings of Sinbad and an inspirational speech from basketball great Michael Jordan.
That these celebrities perform for Walmart for free might surprise you.
Top celebrities gift appearances to Walmart
Walmart does not pay these stars to appear or perform. Walmart spokesperson Dianna Gee told MSNBC that the company covers hotel and travel expenses, but pays celebrities only in exposure for their latest projects.
“Every entertainer that is here has something to do with our business,” Gee said. “There’s some connection from the business, whether it’s CDs, books, or t-shirts.”
Gee said that film studios and record labels “really work with” Walmart to recruit the talent for the annual meetings.
“Most celebrities in this day and age consider themselves brands,” said Marvet Britto, president and CEO of The Britto Agency, a branding and talent representation firm. “When you consider yourself a brand, it is a smart partnership for you to align yourself with one of the biggest consumer retailers in the world, and that is Walmart. It is a smart alliance, and a smart exchange of services for any celebrity to make when you are asked to perform for a retailer as influential, powerful and economically strong as Walmart.”
Walmart: The world’s largest retailer
“Walmart is a symbol of where literally everybody in America shops,” Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture at Duke University, told theGrio. “It’s a big deal. If you’re a spokesperson for a brand or if you have a brand yourself, it’s important that people can buy your stuff in a Walmart in Kansas.”
Indeed, Walmart’s reach is staggering. The corporate behemoth is the world’s largest retailer, its biggest private employer and its third-largest public corporation. In fiscal year 2013, the company reported net sales of $466.1 billion, up five percent from the previous year.
According to its corporate web site, Walmart serves “245 million customers and members weekly worldwide.”
And Walmart is reportedly Hollywood’s biggest retail outlet, currently accounting for up to 50 percent of physical CD and DVD sales according to an industry source who spoke with theGrio. A 2003 New York Times report also states that Walmart sales, “often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD.”
Experts agree on Walmart’s influence
Such clout does not go unnoticed by brand managers, talent agencies, celebrities and agents.
According to Britto, “it’s more dangerous for a celebrity to say ‘no’ to a retailer” in today’s climate, in which selling hard copies of media products is more difficult.
She also said celebrities’ free performances for a store like Walmart are “certainly not something that they would ever be compensated for,” because such celebrities will likely receive some form of “in-kind” compensation that benefits the sales of current or future products sold at Walmart stores.
“In any situation there is a limited amount of retail space,” Britto elaborated. “I’ve been in various meetings where it’s been positioned – by either the record company or [another entity] – that we need to ‘play nice’ with this retailer, because of the economic power that they can yield over the success or failure of our product. That product can be music, that product can be that artist’s or celebrity’s clothing line, or whatever products they’re selling.”
The key that makes this a win-win for artists and Walmart is that potential promise of retail space.
The promise of retail space to stars
“These celebrities act in their movies and record their music, and the most important retail outlet for what they do is Walmart,” Dr. Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, told theGrio. “Tickets get sold at theaters and music concerts and downloads happen, but as far as retail importance for this stuff, Walmart is this giant force.”
And that means that free appearances at annual shareholders’ meetings can ultimately pay dividends for celebrities if their merchandise ends up in prominent spaces on store shelves.
Pepper Miller, founder of The Hunter–Miller Group, a consumer research, trend analysis and marketing strategy company, has spent her career helping Fortune 500 companies market their products to African-American consumers. Miller previously worked at an ad agency that had Walmart as a client, and recalled attending a Walmart national store managers’ meeting where Colin Powell was scheduled to speak.
“Mr. Powell’s books were everywhere at Walmarts across the country,” Miller told theGrio via email. She said celebs are likely assured distribution of their products in exchange for their appearances.
Positive images of Walmart
The Obama administration has worked with the international sales behemoth to promote issues such as the president’s health care plan. According to a 2009 report from the Associated Press, Walmart supported the president’s Affordable Care Act by publicly endorsing the idea that large retailers should provide insurance to employees, an idea central to the health care overhaul. President Obama has also recently appointed Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the most recent former head of the Walmart Foundation, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
First lady Michelle Obama is also working with Walmart to promote healthy eating. After announcing that her Let’s Move campaign will partner with Walmart to fight childhood obesity, the company committed to a five-year plan to reduce fat, salt and sugar in its house brands, and encourage other brands it carries to do the same. In March 2013, the first lady praised Walmart for its efforts to promote good nutrition from a Walmart store in Springfield, MO, a town that was battling over whether to build an additional Walmart in its historic downtown at the time.
Walmart’s high-profile support of some Obama administration initiatives may have made the public more aware of the company’s charitable efforts.
In another move, likely to demonstrate sensitivity, Walmart ended its relationship with Southern celebrity chef Paula Deen in the wake of revelations that she had used racial slurs in the past.
Despite these actions, not all headlines about Walmart have been positive,
Negative press plagues the retailer
On August 7, it was reported that Walmart has agreed to pay $190,000 to fix hazards uncovered during an inspection by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at a Rochester, N.Y. store. Workers there and at Walmart stores nationwide who work with trash compactors and cleaning chemicals will soon receive training and upgraded working conditions as part of Walmart’s settlement with OSHA. Walmart agreed to implement changes at its 2,857 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores to improve worker safety.
OUR Walmart, a union-backed group of company employees, issued a statement in response to the OSHA ruling. It said, “This is just the latest indication of Walmart’s malfeasance throughout the supply chain, and these serious problems represent a major danger to workers, the environment, and the company’s future. As workers we routinely face inadequate fire safety measures, including blocked fire exits, and do not receive proper training on how to safely handle hazardous chemicals.”
Randy Hargrove, Walmart spokesman, said the company has had long standing policies to ensure employees’ safety. “When we learned of the concerns raised by OSHA at our Rochester store in 2011, we immediately addressed them and reinforced the company’s guidelines,” he said.
After a November 2012 factory fire in Bangladesh, and a factory building collapse in another part of that country in April 2013, Walmart corporate execs were on the defensive. Revelations surfaced that suppliers there had violated Walmart goals not to engage with negligent partners. In those cases, Walmart ended its affiliations with those suppliers, and in July 2013 signed the Bangladesh Worker Safety Initiative which, in addition to providing independent oversight of factories, will be funded by Walmart and other signatory retailers.
In recent months, Walmart workers have gone on strike to protest what they describe as poverty-level wages and poor working conditions.
In addition, recent lawsuits have alleged gender and racial discrimination in hiring, promotion and firing at the retailer.
The Supreme Court struck down a class action lawsuit last year brought on behalf of 1.5 million women who allegedly accused Walmart of gender bias. It would have been one of the biggest job discrimination cases in U.S. history. The Supreme Court ruled that the suit did not have class action status in part because the group was too large.
As a result, the women’s lawyers related to this case have been filing smaller “regional” discrimination lawsuits, including cases in California and Florida.
A U.S. District judge ruled this month that the new case in California involving 150,000 women was still too big.
Walmart released a statement in response saying that it, “is pleased that today’s ruling rejects the attempt of a few associates to turn their individual complaints into a sweeping and unwarranted class action. As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in 2012, these claims are unsuitable for class treatment because each individual’s situation is so different. We’ve said all along that if someone believes they have been treated unfairly, they deserve to have their timely, individual claims heard in court.”
In 2009, Walmart paid $17.5 million to settle a suit alleging the company had discriminated against African-American job applicants. Walmart denied it engaged in any unlawful discrimination, and said settling the suit was in its best interest.
On the environmental front, the company was fined $82 million earlier this year for dumping hazardous waste in California and Missouri. In this criminal case, the retailer was charged with six counts of violating the Clean Water Act in California and one count of violating a federal law related to pesticide disposal in Missouri. Walmart pled guilty on all counts. Investigators brought the charges after employees were found throwing hazardous products in the trash and into sewage systems. “We have fixed the problem,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said. “We are obviously happy that this is the final resolution.”
But despite instances where workers either have expressed dissatisfaction or where their actions have gotten the company into hot water, Walmart enjoys large public displays of worker support, such as the rally attended by thousands that took place during this year’s shareholders’ meeting.
Do celebrities understand what they support?
Such examples might prompt the public to question how these controversies impact the decision of celebrities to support Walmart at annual shareholders’ meetings.
Syracuse’s Dr. Robert Thompson said that, even for those stars who may have reservations about publicly supporting Walmart, the benefits of their corporate “cheerleading” outweigh the drawbacks.
“I don’t normally associate Will Smith with showing up for free to promote a company that’s got labor issues,” Thompson said. “So all I can think is that Walmart is the powerfully important partner with them for what they do. They’re the ones that actually move product off the shelf in an [Internet] era when moving things off the shelf is becoming less and less the model.”
Yet, many stars do not see personal appearances for Walmart at shareholders’ meetings as a statement of personal alignment with the company.
For some, these events are perceived in a similar vein to a celebrity’s attendance at a marketing event for a fee, which is a very common occurrence, and one that most fans don’t associate with intimate involvement with a brand. But, instead of a fee, stars receive product sales and favorable product placement.
Walmart is in thousands of communities, reaches out with charitable enterprises and is an attractive retailer because of low price points on its goods and commodities. Most would argue that this is why millions of Americans shop at Walmart. So it may be hard to apply a more stringent standard to celebrities than you would to the average consumer walking through Walmart’s doors, experts quoted in this article say.
“In general, celebrities are not that well-informed about some of the policies of these companies,” said Duke’s Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. “I’m sure if you were to randomly ask any of them about the labor practices of Walmart, or any other of these companies, that’s generally something they don’t know much about.”
Stars: Not trying to be political
“Many of them aren’t trying to be political at all in any way, because it breeds controversy, and controversy can disrupt your brand,” Neal added. “So in their minds,” he said they may be thinking, “’I’m just simply performing at this particular event; I’m not necessarily co-signing their practices at all.’”
Marvet Britto echoes that sentiment. “When you’re being asked to endorse a brand, it’s a little bit different from being asked to perform for and engage boards of directors,” she said. “In an artist’s mind, that is a coup for them. That is a prestigious ask, if you will, because it is one that is noteworthy. It is not one that every celebrity gets. So, they think that there is a certain level of honor, a certain level of cachet, that goes with being invited. That’s something that is only extended to top-tier, A-list talent. They’re not looking at that singular invitation as a global endorsement of a brand and its practices. They are looking at it as an in-kind trade of equity. You are allowing me a place in your business, a platform from which to sell my product, and in exchange I am going to lend you my services for an evening, an afternoon, etc.”
Some stars, theGrio found, while lacking knowledge of the allegations against Walmart, may perform for the company largely in support of its philanthropic efforts. Last year, Walmart donated over a billion dollars in cash and in-kind contributions to charity.
“Many artists just look at that as an in-kind trade for their services, not an endorsement,” Britto concluded. “They see it differently.”
TheGrio reached out to Walmart for comment on the negative allegations against the company described in this story. Walmart responded via email that the company declines to comment in order “to focus on more timely issues impacting our customers and associates.”
The celebrities mentioned in this story either declined to comment on it, or did not respond to theGrio by publication time.
Follow Lauren Carter on Twitter at @ByLaurenCarter