Nick Ross a leading reviewer of PC’s the owner of ‘High Performance Laptops web site, who also writes for SmartHouse and ChannelNews, has called for a boycott of Dell and Alienware claiming that the Companies actions “Almost killed him”.
His comments have kicked off a debate about how PR Companies are paid to milk exposure from tech writers and tech media sites in an effort to get a favourable review or story without any contribution “or very little” contribution to the originators of the content.
And when they don’t like a story, or a negative review believe that ‘black banning” a media organisation’ actually works when in reality the pen is mightier than the sword as Dell is finding out after Ross called for a boycott of the big PC brand.
The former tech editor at the ABC Ross has singled out Dell’s in house PR Manager Kirsty Matta for her recent actions in a row between Ross and Dell and the use of the words High Performance Laptops’.
Ross (seen below) claims that Peggy Arsenis a former Marketing Manager at Dell, who has since left the Company, also contributed to his call for a boycott after Dell marketing realised that there was an advantage to be gained by mimicking what Ross was doing with his web site, High Performance Laptops.
Ross is calling on journalists and consumer broadly to support his boycott of Dell a US Company who of late has been mass laying off of staff with his call for a boycott appearing to be working according to comments on social media sites.
Ross along with several of his supporters claim that PR Companies and inhouse PR Managers are using journalists to get “free exposure” without any contribution or marketing investment in either the journalist or tech media Companies.
Instead, they are pouring money into the likes of Google who are accused of “stealing” tech content so that they can sell advertising around the content and reviews generated by tech skilled journalists.
Ross owns the web site High Performance Laptops, his aim in setting up the operation was to deliver reviews of premium notebooks.
“All of the vendors, including Dell Australia “liked what he was doing”.
Late last year he noticed that Dell had started advertising against his site’s name.
“I asked Dell Australia to stop the practise” he said.
Peggy Arsenis responded claiming that she had been advised by Dells Media agency that the campaign was geo targeting ANZ.
Ross claims that ‘Shortly afterwards, Dell Australia built their own High Performance Laptops webpage/microsite and spent significant money on Google Search ads, marketing it”.
In a later meeting with Ross Kirsty Matta claimed, “The marketing strategy that we’ve got at the moment is right for our business and fair and compliant”.
“You know sort of fair play in the marketplace” she said.
In targeting Ross’s web site, the 10 ton gorilla in the fight said, “What we are doing is fair and compliant”.
Ross responded to Matta claiming “The question really isn’t whether they’re legally allowed to do it. It’s a case of…. that there’s very few laptop journalists in Australia and rather than get any support for my site, you’d rather spend money on undermining it?”.
“I knew full well what I was getting into when I wanted to start using a generic term as a brand, now Dell’s copying that” he said.
His comments on social media pages appear to have resonated with several observers in the industry.
Ben Moore a tech journo and host of The Business of Tech podcast wrote “The absolute stories I used to hear about how Dell would treat their own reseller partners, this doesn’t surprise me at all”.
Todd Scott a New Zealand media owner said ” There’s a classic line in sales. “Buyers are liars,” “brands are the worst liars”.
He claims that he’s had a lot of experience of promises of advertising support for editorial support…. they want you to send columnist across the world to cover a launch,” show me that ad campaign first, I’d say!”
Anthony Lowe a Director at The Roxburgh Group wrote ” May I offer you a PR perspective on how/why this happened? You need to understand that the decision making process in most US corporations is a US-led, top down, ‘yes sir no sir’ hierarchy. The Australian reps would have had zero influence/power on anything set by the US (especially budget)”.
“After the Oz team ‘briefed them’, the US decision makers would have realised it was a ‘sh*t sandwich’ and kept it at arm’s length”. he wrote.
“As for your media buying problem, welcome to AI programmatic media buying. The buyers type in ‘find highest trending Google keywords’ for Dell. Up comes High Performing Laptops because of your hard work. They then select a budget with lots of zeros & hit send”.
“Google ads did the rest (and the headline). As you guessed, they don’t know you exist because the ad buy is decided by a computer algorithm. And that’s my educated PR guess on why the ‘sh*t sandwich’ happened”.
Phil Sim, Chief Executive Officer, Influencing & the MediaConnect Group said “It’s fair to say that there is a growing chasm between the technology media and vendors, particularly within consumer technology. What used to be a symbiotic relationship, where advertising supported journalism, has been degrading over many years as more and more budget is directed towards performance marketing”.
He added “It’s fair to say that a lot of media, particularly independent publishers feel slighted that companies throw large amounts of money at public relations and branding exercises, but many have simply stopped supporting media. The upshot of that is more and more pay-to-play media, which isn’t a positive outcome for anyone”.
Dell has not commented for this story however we have seen the correspondence between Ross and Dell marketing management.
We have also asked Kirsty Matta to comment on the issue.
