• Ad Age, Wednesday, October 4, 2006 12 PM

According to a new commercial, Wal-Mart saves working families an average of $2,300 a year, "which buys a lot of things--and a whole bunch of freedom." So speaks the narrator in "Sam's Dream," a far-from-typical spot from the country's mightiest and most-maligned retailer. The political-style ad actually comes from PR giant Edelman Blue Worldwide, and took an unusual route to the airwaves: It was created without the input or approval of the company's marketing department. Two distinct camps are forming inside the $317 billion retail colossus, with one being the marketing machine aimed at moving the merchandise and the other an increasingly powerful public-affairs division.

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