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We have had this ongoing issue with PowerTV, and their main gal "PowerMelissa" for years. This media company has several times over the years came into our forums and posted their video spam. Every time, we have trash-canned it because it is nothing but spam.
But these people are relentless, always coming back under a new user name which gets banned again. They contact me by phone and email asking to get reinstated to post their spam. They have been told , NO. If they want to advertise here are the programs.
They are the worse than the porn and Viagra people from Russia!
So, looky here at this Detroit News story today that exposes their little scam. This is truly FNSWEET!
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...319/1148/rss25
Car enthusiast sites ban video they say crosses border between fandom and guerilla marketing. Sharon Terlep / The Detroit News
An odd and controversial video has been cropping up in the online world of auto enthusiasts.
The five-minute spot, made by a company called powerTV, shows a group of car customizers rebuilding a Ford Mustang with a high-performance engine made by General Motors Corp. The video, posted to a host of auto fan sites by a blogger named PowerMelissa, has all the hallmarks of one made by die-hard auto enthusiasts.
But this particular production has riled scores of bloggers, who say powerTV is shamelessly using their Web sites as a form of free advertising for big-name clients like GM, something both the automaker and powerTV deny. At least a dozen auto fan sites have banned powerTV videos altogether. The situation exemplifies the type of messy debate that's playing out in cyberspace as companies big and small turn to increasingly unconventional forms of advertising in their quest to get a younger tech-savvy crowd to pay attention to their products.
"There's just no rule book for this like there is with other types of media," said James Lawrence, who founded powerTV in 2006.
PowerTV, a fledgling Murrieta, Calif. company with eight employees, runs an online video-sharing network for the automotive market and creates promotional videos for its clients. Lawrence said the company made the Mustang video purely to stir up debate and promote its own Web site. For Mustang fanatics, the idea of swapping a Corvette engine into the iconic pony car is nothing short of automotive sacrilege.
GM has employed powerTV to create productions, such as a recent employee training video, Lawrence said. And, naturally, he said, his company will do what it can to make GM happy. But he said the automaker doesn't pay powerTV to advertise on the Web.
"In our world, does the fact that GM is a client of ours affect what parts we'll put on our vehicles? Of course," said Lawrence, who added that his company now asks permission before posting such videos. "When you're dealing with the Internet, there's definitely a further blurring of lines."
GM spokesman Tom Henderson said the automaker's relationship with powerTV is entirely unrelated to the video in question. The automaker does, however, recognize the value in courting the crowd that cruises such fan sites.
"In the past year or two, we've really begun to focus a lot of what we do on engaging enthusiasts," Henderson said. "PowerTV helps us reach our consumers."
It's a sensitive issue for the enthusiast sites, most of which specifically prohibit companies from posting advertising content without paying for the right to do so.
"It sounds trivial to some people, but to true enthusiasts, it's a slap in the face," said Tim Beggs, moderator of StangNet.com, a longtime Mustang fan site. The forum was among those to ban powerTV.
"You pour your heart into something and try to make a product nice and strong, and someone comes and litters on your front door. You do take exception to them."
PowerTV's Lawrence said his tiny company made some missteps, namely posting promotional material without permission, in trying to establish a name. Another one of powerTV's high-profile clients, parts supplier Tenneco Inc., asked Lawrence to stop posting videos because the company feared an image problem, he said.
Complications are bound to arise, Lawrence said, as the world of automotive media becomes more interactive and user-driven.
"We showed a little bit of disregard for those communities by not asking them if they could post our material. We definitely learned our lesson."
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Originally Posted by Shay
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