edit: I guess spam is by definition commercial email. Still, I think it's possible to have a business relationship with a company where it's acceptable for them to send an occasional email that you didn't specifically request.
It is unlikely that the business is your friend ;-).
They have proven themselves to me and I like them on an irrationally human level.
What bothers me, however, is when the other 99.9% of the brands I interact with automatically assume that they are the 0.1%.
Yes, it's possible and acceptable to have that kind of relationship between a client/business, but the problem becomes when a brand believes that they can control that relationship, or define it themselves, or simply assume that it exists.
That's only some definitions. There are more hardcore people who'd view anything they didn't explicitly request as 'spam', just some of it originating from people they know vs companies they know.