New EA Promotion: Bribe the Media

(MoneyWatch)  You hear all sorts of schemes that companies use to curry favor from the media and entice coverage, but what EA has apparently been doing is so blatantly foolish and out of touch with reality that I'm amazed anyone has the chutzpah to suggest it, let alone carry it out.

GamePro noted that in its zeal to promote the game Dante's Inferno, EA sent $200 checks to reviewers. Apparently this was not EA's first trip down the aisle of questionable taste:

At E3 2009, a fake protest was staged about the game's sacrilegious and adult content. When it came time to promote the "Lust" circle, Comic-Con attendees were asked to take salacious photographs with their booth babes. In comparison, the severed leg cake and barbecued rib lunch sent to the GamePro office was relatively tame.

I understand that trying to get attention for a software title can require ingenuity and that the original work by Dante Alighieri provides fodder for fancy. But sending checks? That one action has spiked much of their promotional fervor in a number of ways:

• Once the word is broadly known in the gaming community, everyone is going to distrust any positive word as potentially the result of payola.
• Many publications are going to show the product to the door because the attempt violates significant ethical standards in journalism.
• Similarly, many writers will steer clear of the title because they won't want to be tarred with the guess-you-cashed-the-check brush.
• Given recent mutterings by the Federal Trade Commission, intelligent bloggers are also going to be wary.
• When the distribution channel hears this, they're going to be wary of whether buyers might also have received "inducements." If the writers are getting them, why assume that the people who place the orders aren't?

I'm not saying that writers never encounter forms of temptation ranging from trips to meals to shows and a variety of paraphernalia. And I also know that many people in marketing become cynical about journalists happy for a freebie. But a check? It's so obvious as to become a liability. And it seems inconceivable that anyone at EA thought this couldn't blow up in the company's face.

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