Paul Boutin

Given the barrage of sexy, futuristic ads for Samsung on TV and in print lately, it was surprising to learn that the company had blown off Tom’s Hardware Guide for reviewing its products.

We all know Tom’s as the obsessive, respected hardware review site that sent Intel’s flawed Pentium III chips back to the lab. But maybe it’s not obvious to Samsung marketers that Tom’s pulls nearly 40 million pageviews a month in 9 languages worldwide. Or that Tom’s reviews also appear high in search engine results because everyone links to them.

Samsung reps repeatedly turned down Tom’s request for a review unit to include in a flat-panel roundup review because “Tom’s is just a website, not a magazine, and review units are reserved for the press.” I wonder if they could name a single magazine that reviews flat panel monitors and has as many readers as Tom’s Hardware Guide, or is quoted as often by other sites.

The story made Slashdot, with predictable results - a call for a boycott, etc - but more importantly, a guarantee that the embarassing saga would become a high-scoring search result for people researching flat-panel displays, the current consumer electronics lust item. It may not damage Samsung’s monitor sales significantly, but it sure blows the image being projected in those ads.

Tom’ s latest update says Samsung has reconsidered its policy for the future and will include Tom’s in its press list. I had looked forward to writing an article about worst practices in online marketing based on the episode. I had been pitching it to the same print magazines to whom Samsung did send review units, to make my point. But I’m glad to see people at Samsung learning the Net instead.