White Digital Media is a company that should be shut down. The fact that this operation has been allowed to stay open as long as it has is disgusting. As a former employer I knew very early on that the entire operation was simple shady, and after reading all these posts online I am absolutely right. I loved that last post about the intern that said they had to create fake social media profiles to make it look like there's activity on their website. That's the thing about WDM, they remind me of the movie the Wizard of Oz. All smoke and mirrors, stylish websites with their flash and videos, and their inflated database, one thing you must understand is that no one is reading it, no one. When the curtain is pulled back all you see is tiny little Glen White behind the curtain. I must stress and I'll say it again, there is no one reading their magazines. Its a shell, designed nicely, looks sharp with the latest flip page technology and nonsense initiatives, but if you peel back the layers, there's no real worth there.
The business model itself of getting the association on board, to then highlight a member, and sell ad space to their suppliers isn't a bad thing if they did it right and they actually gave these companies exposure, there's nothing wrong with giving companies online exposure, we do live in a digital world. But they don't, and every reason they say to lure you in they simply dont do. They say their magazines are read by 1.5 million readers (or whatever it is now). This is untrue. Any email they collect at an executive level is recorded and sent into a database, they do receive the latest issue, but that doesn't mean they are reading it, it simply goes into their trash or spam folder. They say they SEO all the featured articles, big deal, my 12 year old niece can SEO an article, again it doesn't mean anyone is reading it. The digital brochure, which is the main selling point when conning a client, is sent to them only if they ask for it, if they don't, they don't take the time to send it to them. And when they do its a cheesy cut and paste job, nothing impressive by any means, all their corporate profiles read, and look the same. The actual magazines are anywhere from 300-500 pages, who has the time to read 500 pages in a magazine, per month?!,
I laughed my ass off when they broke out their Digital Footprint campaign some time ago which consisted of a lot of fluff that an average executive wouldn't understand nor has the time to really care about. I showed a friend of mine who works for a large marketing company the so-called benefits of WDM's Digital Footprint and right away he laughed his ass off. The features they offer at a price tag of 15,000 can be done by a entry level marketing rep. They tried their Digital Footprint and the higher ups thought it was the next big thing, good thing they didn't sell any. They didn't sell one Digital Footprint. Too funny. And that's just it, that's what WDM does, they hope and pray that people out there are so stupid enough to fall for it. And there are a lot of stupid people out there cause they keep doing it over and over again.
I see lately they are trying to incorporate celebrities on all their covers, I guess to get people more interested, so I clicked on a latest issue which had a celebrity on it only to flip the page and see an article on a tiny supply chain company?!, don't really understand the synergy there, but again its all apart of the smoke and mirrors show at WDM.
The sales process is aggressive, we were trained to be. They apply leverage and do it aggressively so that the supplier thinks that they have to buy an ad so they dont piss off their client. It's just unethical. And if they featured company does not sell any ad space, they dont run the feature, they forget about them completely.
From what I hear they are falling apart anyway, and they will. |
