“There’s a cockfight on aisle four.”

The last thing I expect to see at Walmart is a cockfight… and yet, it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear there was one.

Bad publicity is nothing new for the Walmart brand.

This is the first time Walmart has been caught hosting a cockfight in a Mexico store, but they’ve had other troubles in the Mexico stores this year.

The company faced a corruption and bribery scandal in Mexico just a few months ago. The investigation has already cost the company over $400 million, and it hasn’t yet concluded.

What after a scandal like that, what is the real cost to a brand? A company’s brand is the emotion and feeling people get when they think about the company.

People can’t feel too great about the Walmart brand. Earlier this week, mind you the same week as the cockfight scandal, a Walmart vice president was caught lying about having a college degree. And he was a vice president of public relations.

Walmart has a reputation for paying low wages, poor company culture, inflated executive salaries, a history of racial inequality, and numerous other grievances that disengage employees. Is Walmart’s company culture too broken to fix?

And, well, and then there’s this…

Friends don’t let friends go to Walmart like this. With 15 fine photos to choose from on this website alone, where does one begin?

How does a brand respond when they have a reputation for this? Walmart’s reputation management chief resigned last year, but, honestly, it’s kind of hard to tell from a consumer point of view whether or not he has been replaced.

I can’t say that the fashion choice of the Walmart customer base is necessarily the company’s fault. But Walmart certainly does have a reputation for an “entertaining clientele,” and that reputation has attached itself to the brand. Friends really shouldn’t let friends go anywhere looking like this.

In today’s article on the cockfight, a Walmart spokesman admitted cocks were in the Mexican store and that they were fighting, but it wasn’t a “cockfight” because razor blades weren’t attached to the roosters.

Oh Walmart.

Maybe friends just shouldn’t let friends go to Walmart… ever.