Nvidia "Forum Influencer Program*" *in search of the real name

[MadduckUK]

Hello , one of you may remember me.

I have recollections of Nvidia running a program where users were given hardware in return for *spreading the word*. Although as youtube wasn't a thing it never really became a big story like the GPP.

Anyone got a link to an article from the time, or can remember any more details?

[Saracen999]

I remember you, no problem, though you may not remember me, since I gained the 999 bit. Good to see you. Keeping OK?

I vaguely remember the story you refer to, but not any detail, so can't help with that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It was first reported on this website IIRC:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...nt=firefox-b-d

For the record, while there are certainly "Manchurian Fans" being hired to promote products in the games and/or gaming hardware world, Nvidia and AEG have both clearly denied that they have hired stealth marketers to create personas to promote Nvidia products. We have no reason not to believe them and have stated that elsewhere on the site, but am putting it up again just to outline it. (Naturally, we'd like to know who is hiring these stealth marketers, so feel free to pass on anything regarding this you feel germane.)

2.8.06 1:49 AM EDT By consumerist.com

evil marketing videogames nvidia aeg arbuthnot gaming

For the record, while there are certainly “Manchurian Fans” being hired to promote products in the games and/or gaming hardware world, Nvidia and AEG have both clearly denied that they have hired stealth marketers to create personas to promote Nvidia products. We have no reason not to believe them and have stated that elsewhere on the site, but am putting it up again just to outline it. (Naturally, we’d like to know who is hiring these stealth marketers, so feel free to pass on anything regarding this you feel germane.)

When we first wrote the story we were led to believe that something along these lines was occurring. Mr. Perez’s four day silence after his last reply saying, essentially, that it’d be easier/better for him to discuss this on the phone seemed like he wanted to avoid the questions entirely. (He never called or returned further emails, even the one I sent on Friday saying I was planning on running my story on Monday.)

There’s a very good post on the Beyond 3d forums posted tonight where an Nvidia Focus Group member posted details of the program and his participation in it. The program sounds pretty great. Soliciting opinion from your customers is something we whole-heartedly encourage.

But why was the Focus Group program hidden?

AEG states in a statement to Shacknews that “The names of those individuals whom we solicit opinions from are not made public in order to assure the quality and honesty of feedback from consumers.” Isn’t it fair to the peer group of the Focus Group participants to know that their trusted source happens to get free gear from Nvidia?

The point isn’t that the program is inherently bad. It’s that hiding the program is both a disservice to their customers and leads to assumptions that other, more nefarious programs could be going on.

At one point in our post-story phone conversation, Mr. Perez—after spitting out the stock-standard, “Hi, nice to talk. Expect to hear from my lawyers,” routine—tried to ‘educate’ us about the way that PR was changing in the internet age. Because so much marketing is done via word-of-mouth recommendations these days, he explained, it was important for Nvidia to “reach out” to the community and take advantage of the enthusiasm of their most hard core fans to act as liasons and “their voice” in the community.

What he didn’t seem to understand (and maybe he could get his lawyers to help explain it to him) is why the customers who aren’t part of the Focus Group might want to know who was in the program, so they could know who to trust. Until The Consumerist posted this story yesterday, was the Nvidia Focus Group even publicly acknowledged at all? If it’s so innocent and innocuous, why not?

We never had to ask if our TV was lying to us, because we know it does. We don’t go out for beers or talk about games with our radios. These days, with direct contact with their customers, marketing initiatives have to be transparent else risk alienating their base. Every time a company interacts with the community, they have a responsibility to put all their cards on the table. PR is changing, but it’s changing because the customers are smarter and more connected than they used to be.

Mr. Perez posed this question to us: If a customer goes to the store and purchases an Nvidia product, then writes a review of the product online, is the opinion any less valid than when the customer receives the product for free? We feel the answer is obvious. That Mr. Perez sees no conflict of interest is a testament to his and Nvidia’s poor grasp on the changing nature of consumerism.

We encourage Nvidia and AEG to retool their Focus Group program to be fully transparent. Trust in your customer’s ability to make an informed decision. We can handle it.

There are indications Nvidia asked back as far as 2004:
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/ha...s-group.85499/


It was kept quite until around 2005/2006 when Nvidia rebranded it as people who "evaluated" their hardware. Then all of a sudden you found loads of posters on forums,having the Nvidia Focus Group forum signature,but it only happened when news of it became more common knowledge:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads...s-mods.159258/
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads...-group.155295/

It turned out moderators,etc on forums such as AT were part of the programme,and people figured out why they were having a soft spot for Nvidia.
A big thread on Beyond3D about it:
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/n...utreach.24489/

Rollo was a key member of the programme and he posted on here,until he got banned(and got banned from many forums too apart from ABT). Many of the members such as Rollo really went into overdrive around the time fo Fermi.

It was always the same spiel by most of them - the competition was rubbish,you should pay for more GPUs,and any expectations was "entitlement" as companies don't serve you,as it was implied consumers served them,etc. Mutiple accounts were everywhere - I even saw comments on random tech articles,having the same kind of carbon copy answers.

Edit!!

It was called the Nvidia Focus Group.

In the end it kind of worked,as people are literally repeating the same kind of marketing points they said for years.

[Saracen999]

That kind of thing gives "reviews" a bad name. It's more like paid promotions.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That kind of thing gives "reviews" a bad name. It's more like paid promotions.

Rollo was on here,and he was eventually banned because people eventually got fed up!!

[Zhaoman]

Remember Rollo lol, the garbage that used to come out of that guy

[MadduckUK]

Hi Sarecen! Yes of course I remember you

And yep thanks for that Cat , especially the Rollo bit. That takes me back.

[Hoonigan]

I was able to find this:

https://hardforum.com/threads/did-nv...ducts.1899422/

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewto...f=43&t=1107065

[Saracen999]

Hi Sarecen! Yes of course I remember you

....

Yeah, but I've spouted the 999 since. I thought it might confuse you. It certainly confused people when I first grew it. Like a bad moustache. Which I also grew a few years ago, but that's .... ahem ... a different story. Of course, nothing as bad as the beard I came home from Uni with. Mum and Dad weren't keen. So I shaved it off, or rather, half off, then said I changed my mind and was keeping it. It was the left half I'd shaved. I thought that was funnier than they did. Oh, well.

Rollo was on here,and he was eventually banned because people eventually got fed up!!

Now that you mention him, yeah, rings a bell. Thanks, Cat.

[Zhaoman]

Saracen:

[Saracen999]

Saracen:

Except that I'm not quite that follicly challenged even now, and my beard cutting experiment was about 40 years ago.

But .... you got the idea dead on. (except about the side bit. Mrs Saracen would kick my nuts up into my nostrils. Then tell her Dad).

[cptwhite_uk]

I forgot all about Rollo! Yeah it's all coming flooding back now. We should try and dig up some of the arguments we was in for a laugh

[Output]

Hi there Madduck, long time no see.

And yes, I remember Rollo too. If I recall correctly, he wasn't shy about mentioning that he was a part of the focus group, but he did seem to come across as being smug about it as if it meant he knew something nobody else did and that it made him better in some way (for all I know, there might have actually been some actual focus group type activity, thus meaning he did have a bit more of an idea, but it wouldn't have surprised me if it was pretty much that in name only).

Not only that however, but he also seemed to act like Nvidia could do no wrong, and that they were the only GPU company to care about.

While Nvidia might have called it a focus group, if Rollo was taken as an example, it was really more of a way to unleash their fanatical fans to hype them up - which detracts from their marketing appeal and overall credibility if others recognise that fact.

[[GSV]Trig]

I don't remember Rollo, but paid advertisers or those that lean reviews in one way or another, due to being paid or getting free stuff, should be very open about it, at which point, why review something, might as well take it out of a box, take some pictures and then leave it, anything beyond that is going to be biased..

Problem is everyone has bills to pay and mouths to feed so there's always going to be a figure where their morals take an exit..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well what is depressing is people are now repeating the same kind of arguments in defence of companies Rollo made. I have pointed it out so as much as we laughed at Rollo back then,he ultimately had the last laugh. What Nvidia did worked longterm - even the tech press is repeating the same marketing points now.

[Saracen999]

I don't remember Rollo, but paid advertisers or those that lean reviews in one way or another, due to being paid or getting free stuff, should be very open about it, at which point, why review something, might as well take it out of a box, take some pictures and then leave it, anything beyond that is going to be biased..

Problem is everyone has bills to pay and mouths to feed so there's always going to be a figure where their morals take an exit..

Up to a point, yes. Everybody has to earn a living.

But in my day, a good part of that living came from impartially assessing a product, and having the experience and expertise to do it. I was paid by a publisher, who in turn was paid by those buying or subscribing to the magazine. What I was paid for was that objective viewpoint.

Could someone have bought that opinion? In theiry, yes .... but the payment would have had to be large enough to compensate me for the loss of that "good part" of my annual income, and for however many years I had left doing it. Why? Because I would only have to get caught being paid for a biased opinion once to end up never working for that publication again, and I'd bet my left gonad word would have spread between editors at a rate of knots too.

Doing that was career suicide.

So it's not just about morals. It was also about the pragmatic view that no manufacturer was ever likely to have been willing to pay me enough to justify taking the risk of losing many years of a career line that not only paid fairly well, but that I thoroughly enjoyed, too. It would, effectively, have had to be "I can retire in comfort now" money, and no single positive review would have justified that, no matter how glowing.

I wasn't interested in getting paid like that anyway, but even if I had been, it wasn't worth it. And not once in thousands of reviews and 20+ years did anyone even hint at it, never mind offer.

Of course, in the internet age, everyone and his cousin thought writing reviews was a great wheeze, and no doubt quite a few did it for free stuff, which very likely often was costing less than than I was being paid. But the public lapped up "free reviews" and magazine sales and subscriptions declined or collapsed. Lots of smaller publications couldn't make that work and closed, and even the bigger ones had to cut their cloth according to their means

So we could argue that, in large part, the public got exactly what they were prepared to pay for and, if you pay peanuts, don't be surprised if you get monkeys. We all, as I said, have to earn a living.