Are Large Corporations Resorting to SPAM for Marketing? Yes They Are!

Ready for another rant? Seems like I’ve been doing quite a lot of that lately. This time, it is about something that I’m sure all the bloggers can relate to: Corporate Comment Spam. It seems that the corporations have indeed resorted to non other than comment SPAM to promote themselves

In the past 3 days, I’ve had to deal with comments from the flunkies of two large corporations: AOL and the The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns HGTV. I’ve chosen to leave out the identities of the perpetrators as the purpose of this post is to to expose what corporations are up to, not to call specific people out.

• HGTV Comment Spam

  I at least give a tiny bit of credit to the guy who has SPAMMED our Real Estate Investing for Real blog comments twice in the past 3 days. It seems that he tries to relate his spammy commercials to the topic at hand. Here’s the latest (I’ve colored the acceptable part in green and the SPAMMY Crap in red):

  Its funny that you should mention Los Angeles, I live there and you are right on. Since the average price of houses is so expensive the take for an agent is ridiculous. Btw, a $350,000 in LA will get you a fixer-upper. I wanted to ask anybody who is reading this…have you seen the show Bought & Sold on HGTV? I work with them and have been alerting people of the show because I think its worth seeing, if you’re into real estate at all…It basically shows 12 different agents trying to show houses and close the deal. It gives you huge insight into the way homes are marketed and how price levels are decided upon in the Northern New Jersey market - which is one of the toughest markets in the country. You can check out a preview - [VIDEO LINK REMOVED] - It’s on Sundays at 10PM e/p time on HGTV. Definitely worth checking out. It’d be funny to see them do one here in LA.

  I actually erased the first one he did, otherwise I’d also share it with you as well. I sent him an email asking him to immediately stop wasting both of our time (his writing and my deleting) and explained what netiquette was. We’ll see if he comes back for more!

• AOL Comment Spam

  AOL is also guilty of dishing out Hawaii’s favorite meat concoction. First I received a form email from someone at AOL trying to get me to blog about their new real estate section. It was impersonal, badly formatted, and poorly written (formatted as received):

  Dear Bloggers,

  I’m a Promotions Manager for AOL Real Estate, and have read your real estate
  blog. Your insights are thought provoking and often times right on the money.
  I
  would love to get your opinion about an “Inside Stories of…” series we are
  currently running. We interviewed various players in the real estate process
  for
  candid (some harsh) realities of the business. I know you’ve posted about such
  subjects, and thought you could take a look at what we’ve done, and offer a
  fascinating perspective; good, bad, or ugly.

  I’ve included our entire lineup for this original series below. If you decide
  to blog and need more info from me, please feel free to contact me anytime.
  Thanks for your time.

  We’d love to be involved on your site if you’d like to link to our home page,
  [LINK REMOVED] we have a lot to offer in exciting original
  content,
  listings, investing information, and staging/home improvement.

  Thanks,
  ~Name Removed

  After going through my daily SPAM scan, I noticed a message that my filters caught written by the same person, as a comment on my most popular post on the blog.

  Check out Unstructured, the official editor’s blog, AOL Real Estate.

  [URL REMOVED]

  Had I gotten the email or the blog SPAM, I would have just ignored it. In conjunction, the campaign to plug AOL’s new real estate site just hit a bad nerve. I decided to write the author back:

  Name Removed-
  A few things. First, It would be great if you had actually personalized the email you sent me instead of sending a form email that probably went to every other real estate blogger around. I’m surprised that a company of AOL’s financial backing couldn’t consider such an obvious move. It looks poorly upon you and your company.

  While the site you are looking to promote is good, your tactics are nothing but amateurish. I was quite shocked to look through my blog’s comments to see that you’ve also gone and SPAMMED us with your site’s link.

  I’ve had bloggers with 2 weeks of experience conduct themselves with more netiquette and web professionalism. I have no intention of supporting your site thanks to your tactics.

  I hope you reconsider how you’re approaching people in the future.

  Sincerely,

  A few of my friends and fellow bloggers recommended that I CC the email to her bosses at AOL. Sometimes I’m a jerk, but not that big of one. I’m not trying to get her fired; I just want people to learn what is and is not okay online these days.

Conclusion

We all know that people are spending more time online these days, corporations included. Apparently the online marketing teams for large corporations want eyeballs at any cost! I think the “street teams” of old, who kept busy handing out promo items on street corners, have given way to a group of young hired SPAM teams. They’re hitting the social networks, forums, and now, the blogs.

Apparently corporations still don’t understand online netiquette. Way to go! Piss off the whole online blogging community while you’re at it! Little do they know that the backlash from the internet can be fast and relentless (we all saw what Digg went through last week), and by ignoring the established “rules” of order online they are setting themselves for a fall.

Anyone think I’ll help promote HGTV or AOL Real Estate now?

5/11/07 UPDATE: Not a day after I wrote this post, HGTV has gone and sent a different person to once again SPAM our blog. From our comments:

May 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am
It seems more and more people are getting into the real estate business these days, without a clear understanding of how the biz really works. For those of you looking for a better understanding, I suggest checking out the new reality show Bought & Sold on HGTV. It’s a great show about the inner workings of the real estate and the lengths brokers will go to just to get the deal. Check it out: [LINK REMOVED]. I work with HGTV and you won’t believe what happens this season. Good luck, and enjoy the show! Don’t forget, the show airs Sundays at 10pm. I’m sure you’ll find it beneficial! Have any of you seen it yet?