Up against it today. So, not much time to comment on these stories that caught my eye recently.

• Blogs can sometimes be just so much more lipstick on the proverbial pig. Jeff Jarvis rails against Wal-Mart. The lesson: companies are judged first and foremost on their behaviour, not their ability to jump the latest communication technique bandwagon. Agreed.
• The words are the brand. Matthew Stibbe is always an advocate for why words matter. Which is a hard sell if, like us, you operate at the point where marketing and technology meet, neither field being great respecters of the written word. The more voices put forward this point of view, the better.

Only after putting these two links together did I realise that one is about corporate actions - what you do - and one about corporate words - what you say (and how you say it).

Corporate actions, obviously, do trump 'mere' words alone. 

Although day-to-day we spend infinitely more time battling and contending with the latter issue (getting the words - or other communications right), not the former (changing corporate DNA).

In my experience, most corporations don't/won't listen to advice (internal or external) on the former, until pulled up by some public debacle or another.