AMD in Stealth Viral Marketing - "Advocacy Program" free HW

apoppin · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:54 pm

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My brain exploded. This is quite a bit of information to process.

We are barely scratching the surface. This is *how* AMD markets now. One user spanning multiple forums with nearly identical posts shilling for AMD. Organization is so obvious between shills who PM each other and gang up on other posters. Multiple accounts that cannot be traced short of a court order.

But i am getting a bit ahead of myself.

And guys, why steer clear of this? You don't like to hear it? Truth will out.

Googoo24 · **Joined:** Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:43 pm **Posts:** 692

apoppin wrote:

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And guys, why steer clear of this? You don't like to hear it? Truth will out.

Not that. It's just a lot info, and I'm too lazy to read through all of it. Right now at least.

It's just me.

Googoo24 · **Joined:** Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:43 pm **Posts:** 692

I also gotta feeling that this might get outta hand at some point.

I'm a lover man! A lover!

apoppin · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:59 pm

No worry, the discussion will probably go on for a couple of days

Remember, we are writing an article together - the first time ever for a tech site! This kind of crafting takes time.

Get out of hand? i don't think so. This is ABT forum.. Not another tech forum; there is nothing like it anywhere else.

apoppin · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:37 am

You want to read up a little on AMD's choice of PR company, Edelman?
--most of their fired marketing department works there doing PR for AMD.
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/edelman_s ... _blog.html

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I'm just amazed at what an easy ride Edelman is getting with this significant and notable error of judgment on their part. It's not about apologizing for a screwup, it's being accountable to a code of ethics, having consequences for violating it, and having a sufficiently transparent internal management structure that lets experts like Steve Rubel at least know about all the blogging initiatives happening at the firm (Rubel explains in his comments that "Edelman has 2500 employees worldwide and I've never even been to Arkansas to meet with Wal-Mart").

Since we are talking about ethics and transparency, what does it say about the Word of Mouth Marketing Association that its members are apparently free to violate their agreed-upon ethical standards, with not much more than a light smack on the hand?

I want to highlight that we're not talking about Steve and Dick, garage bloggers, making a dumb blunder with some little firm that doesn't know much about marketing anyway, we're talking about one of the preeminent PR agencies in the world, one of the largest companies in the world, and one of the best bloggers in the PR space who should have been in the middle, ensuring that things didn't explode as they've done.

So, no, I'm sorry, but a three sentence apology doesn't mean that all is well again in the world of PR blogging, it doesn't excuse the unacceptable gaffe of Walmarting Across America, and I would like to see more from the players involved than a one-time apology and more business as usual.

Rather than just complain, however, can we agree that between this and the recent tempest in the PayPerPost teapot that it's time to create a Blogging Disclosure Best Practices so that we can at least all have similar expectations and maybe move forward without this sort of problem arising again and again?

Googoo24 · **Joined:** Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:43 pm **Posts:** 692

apoppin wrote:

Get out of hand? i don't think so. This is ABT forum.. Not another tech forum; there is nothing like it anywhere else.

Cool. Kill those shills when they arrive. We know they will.

MrK · **Joined:** Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:08 pm **Posts:** 1674

GIFSoup

This is going to be good

apoppin · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:44 am

Here is a little something to look at with your popcorn - AMD's signaled their change in 2009 to adopt targeted viral marketing .. notice "who" - Nigel Dessau, Chief Marketing Officer of AMD
http://blogs.amd.com/corporate/2009/03/ ... deo-views/

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When Nigel Dessau joined AMD about a year ago, he drove a shift in our marketing toward activities designed to strike the bull’s eye of an intended target. For the launch of the AMD desktop technology PC platform codenamed “Dragon” and AMD Phenom™ II processors, the bull’s eye was people who like to build their own PCs for video editing and gaming. I refer to this crowd as “Those Who Know” (TWK, pronounced “tweak”) in that they understand how to build a world-class system for their specific pursuits without spending world-class amounts, and many of them like to overclock a processor to get even more performance than its official rating. I’m a level 1 TWK: I build my own systems, but you might not want me to build yours. . . .
. . . So, web marketers, which would you prefer? Several million whimsical views that abstractly connect to your product brand? Or 500,000 views that hit your bull’s eye audience with a concrete message?

apoppin · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:22 am

No one cares at ABT forum? Or you already figured it out and it is not news? However, the other forum has asked questions, as quoted below. Without interaction here, this thread will stop and i will unsticky it. But you all can be sure now that stealth marketing is not accidental. Nor is it tolerated at ABT forum.

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When I read Q&A I thought he was actually going to ask people in the know NOW, not dig up info from 5 years ago.

He SHOULD be asking questions now but I think after starting something like this, no one from AMD would care to comment.

AMD's PR already recently told me (last week) that they don't care what is being posted on the tech forums. i can give you the AMD Viral playbook from 2009. One of AMD's viral marketers tried to make ABT a flog site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_blog

Notice with whom he got ABT an exclusive interview
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/amd-inte ... g-on-intel

Nigel Dessau, AMD' Chief Marketing Officer

ABT never had a relationship until we found AMD had over-optimized FarCry 2 at the expense of textures and this editor met the Catalyst Maker at HardOCP forum who was discussing the article.
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/farcry2s-broken-ati-hotfix-drivers
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/farcry2-broken-drivers-follow-up-new-hot-fix-driver-soon
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/farcry2-new-hotfix-vs-old-hot-fix-benchmarks

Later on we met Ir0x0r an owner of a small shop specializing in AMD systems and who also organized LAN parties offered to write for us. Well, as it turned out he was a viral marketer for AMD and he gave us his play book hoping that we would play along.

And he had great contacts inside AMD which lead us to wrongly assume that he was legit. He actually got an interview with Niegel Dessau the Chief Marketing Officer of AMD at the time showing how far the viral reach went back in '09.

Later on we published the first unauthorized look at the HD 5970 and got a rather unpleasant call from AMD's Jay Marsden who first demanded that we take down the article, then attempted to cut a deal by offering to send us one.
/viewtopic.php?t=17968
In a polite gesture, we took down a couple of images but left our article intact, And Jay never returned our calls again.

As we got more popular as a tech site, ABT eventually became a media partner with AMD and that relationship still continues to this day. We have been under NDA with AMD from the launch of the HD 5930 all the way through the end of the HD 6000 series and we receive APUs and CPUs from AMD to review.

apoppin · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:18 pm

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How does Rollo tie into AMD viral marketing? Wasn't he an nVidia man, heart and soul? Or is ABT claiming he was secretly an AMD mole who was supposed to offend people so badly with his pro-nVidia talk that they bought AMD just to spite him? I don't get it.

If their is a viral marketer here (among the regular members) then their doing a good job hiding themselves. We have some blatant fanboys of both colors but nobody I would say is a viral marketer. Or, should I say, a very good viral marketer. Any time anyone makes too outrageous of a claim they're pretty quickly slapped down with facts.

i can tell you the story of apoppin vs. Rollo. It lasted for years until i outed him on ATF VC&G. And again at ABT when he attempted to discredit this site just as AMD shills and their friends will do at the other forum. ABT doesn't tolerate ANY stealth marketing.

We took it to Nvidia - right to the top - and they called Rollo a "holdover from our past". And the obvious stealth marketing ended here at ABT; at other tech sites also. And so a void came to be filled - but this time it was from AMD who was using the same tactics as Nvidia had used.

How Rollo ties in is significant in that these kinds of shills use the same playbook in the way they infiltrate the tech sites and recruit other posters.

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BTW, the reason Apoppin is so pissed at AMD is that they called him a few years ago and basically laid out their viral marketing plan for him. When he got offended/upset/etc, it started a long downward slope to his relationship with them, to the point that now they've lost one of their biggest fans. He still claims to this day that 2900xt was a great video card, and he can list numerous bullet points defending his orange box purchase. AMD lost him the same way that nvidia lost many of us during the AEG days, and it's very unfortunate that they weren't willing to try finding a way to salvage that relationship.

i am not pissed. i am disappointed. Sad. i really like AMD and their products. Some guys at their PR i really like and i would be friends with them if possible. It is just that i simply cannot stomach their dirty stealth tactics as they appear to be committed to this kind of "targeted" viral marketing to the tech forums.

AMD in Stealth Viral Marketing - "Advocacy Program" free HW

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