Paramount Doesn’t Get It
It’s amazing how dumb the decisions that some companies make can be. Paramount briefly shut down the blog of a fan who’s been a huge evangelist for the upcoming “Transformers” movie. The Church of the Customer Blog has the scoop…
Last week, the studio asked John Campea, co-author of The Movie Blog, to remove a photo he posted from the forthcoming movie “Transformers.” He complied, only to find yesterday that Paramount had dispatched its attack dogs, a DMCA shiv firmly clenched between their broken, smoke-stained teeth, to take down John’s entire site. (This free-speech/fair comment assault weapon is used quite frequently.) They didn’t like another image on the site, but Paramount neglected to tell John about it…
…Now John is pissed, his readers are pissed, and Digg’ers are pissed. Boycotts of the movie, Paramount DVDs and theme parks are being discussed. Probably won’t be long before the word of mouth jetstream propels this story to new heights.
Paramount obviously doesn’t get it. Why on earth they would do this to such a loyal evangelist (or anyone for that matter) is beyond me. Instead of embracing marketing 2.0 they are squashing it. If I was in Paramount’s shoes I would’ve been feeding John as much content as possible.
This is sure to be a great example of how buzz can work against you if you don’t embrace it.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
Damn, definitely the wrong move. The blogosphere may not be as large as we all think but our reach can extend a lot farther than these companies think.
Was that a gun shot I just heard? Is that someone screaming about a missing toe or something? Huh… ?
Mike, you hit the nail on the head - The blogsphere does have a pretty big reach, look at what happened with the recent comcast & aol issues.
[…] Per Cameron Olthuis: It’s amazing how dumb the decisions that some companies make can be. Paramount briefly shut down the blog of a fan who’s been a huge evangelist for the upcoming “Transformers†movie. The Church of the Customer Blog has the scoop…Paramount Doesn’t Get It - Cameron Olthuis […]