Case study in how not to speak to bloggers: Warner Bros' spam machine stuck 5yrs in the past

Understanding when a story that comes from a company's PR or marketing team is of value to a social media site of some sort is one of the most basic elements of social media relations. Yet it seems some teams, clinging to their word of mouth marketing accreditations, are still adopting some terribly spammy tactics and not seeing anything wrong either. 

The below case study comes from a blogger word of mouth marketing blitz currently being carried out by Warner Bros. It's like they are stuck five years in the past making mistakes any good team worth their salt would wince at. 

It comes from Adam Singer's blog, The Future Buzz. It's well worth a follow. 

Here is a synopsis, but the full blog post is a must-read. It contains most of the blog pitches and responses. 

"...Maybe it’s time for the entertainment industry to stop fighting the future at every turn and work on understanding their audience and developing relationships instead of treating us like numbers.

When much smaller private companies truly understand how to pitch a blogger, it’s amazing how public companies with billions in revenue get it so wrong.

In essence: Warner Bros. could care less about anyone they pitched. To them, we’re just numbers. The reasons we know this?

1. They say “my blog uniquely stood out as dynamic, informative and highly creative” yet they didn’t even personalize the email. Obviously they said this to everyone.
2. On the landing page they linked me to in the email, (I took that part out, they do not deserve link love) they mention it’s to receive information for a TV show. Except, blog readers here know I don’t even watch TV. So why would I possibly care about this?
3. I am vocally opposed to paid blogging. Of course any time someone tries to pitch me on paid blogging I’m going to react negatively.
4. I blogged about EMI for doing something very similar in a not-so-positive light. Clearly I’m going to share these pitches with the web.

They are taking the spray and pray, direct marketing approach to social media. Except, the social web is not merely a numbers game."

Comments

[Jay]

Case studies like this leave me conflicted.

On one hand, I despair that stuch big companies as Warner Bros are at best occasionally completely incompetent and at worst consistently useless. On the other hand, it gives me hope -- if people like myself find the approach abhorrent, then there is hope for us to find somewhere appreciating our talents...