NAB Spamming: A story of a Maverick Blog Personality

BACKGROUND A post by Duncan Riley a few months ago alerted me to NAB leaving commercial unrelated comments on a number of blogs. When questioned their PR agency (Cox and Inhall) defended their position suggesting it is a public space. I thought I would help illustrate what they had just said by going into banks and spamming my blogging message.


For NAB response from spokesperson Felicity Glennie-Holmes check out Jim Stewart video interview.

For the full story over the NAB spamming debacle head too Marketing Magazine indepth post on the issue.

A comment that came up in the MarketingMag Forum by Gerry McCusker caught my attention

‘Julians branch spam stunt adds nothing to the debate but may work as a profile-booster for Colesy as a maverick blog personality’

and here is another quote about the video from his blog

'It’s not very funny, but does say a lot about how one blogger approaches self-promotion.'

I actually respect Gerry cause he has challenged me a number of times (He is not a fan of self promotion through the Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs either).

You gotta love the complement of ‘Maverick Blog Personality and added nothing’. However I think that Gerry is being a little short sighted in thinking that this is the only benefit.

Trying to explain the blogosphere to people who have never published or commented on a blog is a hard challenge. Being able to give analogies of what it is like is a very important learning tool. If my video has made one company think twice about blog spamming (The Marketing Manager thinks what it would be like if they came to our store and did it) then I think you could not argue that I have added nothing to the debate. At the very least I allowed more people to get involved or engaged in the issue.

However if you were trying to say that I have not added anything constructive to NAB, I have to agree with you.

I am a firm believer in constructive criticism and that is why I have offered Felicity Glennie-Holmes NAB Media Manager a ticket to the upcoming AIMIA Advertising and Marketing through Social Media Event (disclosure: I will be speaking at the Conference). I think that this Panel (Andy Jamieson, Andrew Cordwell and Nick Cummins (my old boss)) will give valuable insight too NAB on how they should get involved in social media in the future.