August 26 2010
Social media marketing isn’t the first internet paradigm where unscrupulous “marketers” have lived to flim-flam and trade on the insecurities of people and companies who don’t know any better, taking shortcuts in the process; it’s just the latest online trend in a long lineage of nefarious evolution dating back to the 1980s.
What is the first clue in sniffing out hucksters? Listen to the spiel. It starts at the web site where, “Monetize your social network to build the wealth you always dreamed of” screams the home page before the video of a dynamic and charismatic speaker says, “The internet, for you guys, is a cash register.”
Uh huh.
Unfortunately, at least one Napa Valley winery and potentially several others are being victimized by this “between the margins” internet marketing.
Hardly a Tom Clancy potboiler, but interesting nonetheless—here’s the anatomy of how this unethical internet marketing is currently being conducted:
A couple of days ago I received a direct message on Twitter from Atalon in Napa Valley, a well-reviewed winery. The direct message said, “A must read before hosting your next get together” and included a link to a web site at http://www.wine-specialist.com. There, I could enter my name and email address and receive free content about hosting a wine tasting party. I took the bait. And, when I entered my email address, the web page then took me to the web site of Destination Cellars.
Hmm. That’s weird, I thought.
Moments later I received an email from wine-specialist.com that said my copy of, “The Guide to Hosting a Wine Tasting” was attached to the email, except it wasn’t. I replied to the email asking for the guide and my email was returned to me as undeliverable. At the bottom of the original email was the contact information for a web site called, “The Steele Method” which, after doing a quick review of the site, was an internet marketer.
Hmm. That’s weird, I thought. Again.
At this point, I go back to Twitter to direct message Atalon to ask them not to direct message me again because I consider it to Spam. Come to find out, I can’t direct message Atalon because they don’t follow me on Twitter. Definitely Spam, then.
Okay. So, now I have a Napa winery Spamming me, a wine-specialist.com web site that takes my email address, sends an email that can’t be responded to with the name of an internet marketer in the body of the email and a browser window that has Destination Cellars.
Whatever. I have better things to do with my time so I move on.
However, a couple of days later, I get another direct message—this time from Dana Estates winery, another well-reviewed Napa Valley winery. Similar message, “Just downloaded this wine guide” was the come-on.
Once bitten, twice shy. Whatever. I ignore the message.
Then, this morning, I received an email from wine-specialist.com and in the email they apologize for not sending the attachments before—they had a server issue. My guide to hosting a wine tasting and other content was attached. I open the attachments and it’s cut and paste generic wine information of the garden variety with no logo, label or anything identifying it with Atalon.
Curiosity piqued, I go to Dana Estates Twitter direct message and hit the link and it too takes me to the wine-specialist.com site, too. This time though, the site has been updated with gushing user comments like, “Great post, Love the tasting guide in the back of the e-book. Made copies for all my friends.”
One problem, here – the site isn’t set-up to take comments, so they’re obviously bogus. If my “bogus” suspicion wasn’t valid enough there was a comment from “Drew” at Domaine Carneros, the Napa sparkling house, with a picture with the comment associated with Cardinale, yet another well-reviewed Napa winery. Now, I’m not the sharpest pencil in the cup, but something is up here.
I did some research and sent an email to an “Allie Drew” at Domaine Carneros (I found her via LinkedIn) and she verified that not only did she NOT leave the comment at wine-specialist.com, but she was the only person at Domaine Carneros with “Drew” in her first or last name.
Things started to unravel at this point.
I then tried to direct message Dana Estates. No can do because they don’t follow me on Twitter, either. At this point, my morning is shot playing Matlock, but I’m invested in sniffing this out.
I search for background info on other allegedly bogus commenter’s from wine-specialist.com including Maria T. Hall, whose Twitter page, ironically enough, was started in the third week of July, just as Atalon’s and Dana Estates were. It links to a health-related scam-oriented looking web site called, “EnergyFactor.” Each of the three Twitter pages has been promoting the wine-specialist.com web site.
I decide to send an email to the internet marketer, David Steele, from the “The Steele Method,” asking who his client is for wine-specialist.com. I received a phone call a short time later from Steele who indicates he would email me when I ask for his contact information, while declining to say who the client was, despite Destination Cellars, again, being the site that a user is directed to after an email submission.
Later Steele emails me and says Destination Cellars is not their customer noting, “Currently we do not have a client in the Wine-Specialists.com we are just gathering statistics and if you know of someone who would benefit from the traffic and name capture we would appreciate it (sic).”
A grammarian he is not.
I email David Keuhner, CEO of Destination Cellars to ask him if he’s associated with wine-specialist.com for internet marketing. I get the vague response of, “We have various organizations as well as individuals involved. We’re been (sic) testing various ideas with regards to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Some things are working and some things aren’t, we’re still evaluating the ideas to determine how much or how little we wish to invest.”
I send another email asking, more specifically, if he’s working with David Steele from “The Steele Method” and Keuhner indicates in a response that, yes, that’s one of the people they are working with.
At this point, I have Twitter spam, bogus comments and two guys who contradict each other about working together.
If all of this isn’t confusing enough, I call Dana Estates winery to ask if they have a Twitter account. The woman on the phone didn’t think so. I sent her an email with a link to the Twitter page for verification. Not 40 minutes later, I get an email from the Dana Estates public relations firm indicating that, no, Dana Estates doesn’t have a Twitter account and they’re going to take measures to have the Twitter page removed.
Representatives from Atalon could not be reached.
Phew. That’s a lot of work to get this allegation: David Steele from “The Steele Method” is trying to work with Destination Cellars on internet marketing. In the process of doing so, he has set-up an internet marketing proof of concept designed to indicate to Destination Cellars that he can deliver qualified leads (email addresses) for Destination Cellars business. In so doing, Steele has set-up bogus Twitter accounts under the names of at least one Napa Valley winery, and possibly others.
Of course, I caveat all of this with “allegedly,” but there’s enough evidence that a jury of 5th grader’s would convict.
Is this legal? A better question might be: is this illegal? Not expressly. Twitter’s terms and conditions absolve them of virtually any responsibility, though they do police if prompted to investigate fraudulent accounts. No money has changed hands and the damage to the winery brand under whose name the fake Twitter account(s) was set-up is negligible. The email from wine-specialist.com does allow the receiver to opt-out of receiving additional messages (a requirement). Is it unethical to represent being something you’re not? Absolutely, but that’s for David Steele to reconcile (allegedly). He indicated in his email to me that he considers it, “gathering statistics” so he’s probably sleeping at night.
Fortunately, some back and forth with Twitter will have this resolved for Dana Estates in a couple of days (and with Atalon, as well, if it’s true that their Twitter is also fake). Destination Cellars will likely eventually see this “grey marketing” for what it is.
The irony of the situation is this messaging to consumers and leading them to a web site (landing page) with a promise of content is standard operating procedure for many technology companies and their business-to-business lead generation activity. However, typically, it’s done via advertising in email newsletters, calls-to-action and quality whitepapers – all done in an ethical way, supported by marketing dollars, with no bogus accounts and no fictitious comments. At the end of the day, if done correctly, the business user feels like giving their email address is an even exchange for the content received.
Not so here, or else I wouldn’t have done the sleuthing.
The moral of the story for wineries? Trust, but verify. Be wary of “internet marketers” that take hard, legitimate work and try to take shortcuts and, especially, those that promise to “monetize your social network” tapping into untold wealth.
P.T. Barnum said, “There is a sucker born every minute,” but wineries don’t have to be one of them.
Proactive action for a winery in response to reading this is to go to knowem.com and register a winery-related user name at as many social media web sites as relevant, this will at least prevent somebody from using the name in an unauthorized fashion. In addition, setting up Google alerts for a winery name will allow the winery to keep an eye out for where their name appears online.
In a subsequent post, I’ll highlight a winery that is doing a good job with legitimate internet marketing.
Here are links to various Twitter accounts, web sites and my sleuthing trail:
Twitter page for Maria T. Hall
Posted in, Wine: A Business Doing Pleasure. Permalink | Comments (31) |
Agreed, Joe!
And, I feel doubly bad for the wineries who have the hijacked twitter account(s)—their first introduction to social media is, unfortunately, very unpleasant.
Jeff
Those scams have been coming my way, too, but long ago I made a decision to delete anything that I did not initiate or do not know anything about. Don’t care if something legit gets lost, because those that are legit will know better ways to do business than to bombard with unsolicited crap.
Plus, these are the kinds of scams that can include a phishing expedition for entry into your hard drive and all your personal information, and it isn’t worth risking that for the possibility of reading someone’s unsolicited marketing message.
In other words, if we all deleted junk, spam, whatever email, maybe one day the lack of response would kill the beast. I have to believe that the only reason it continues is because there is indeed a sucker born every minute, and that is a good statistic for a spammers’ success rate.
Excellent sleuthing, Jeff. Somebody needed to pen this post; I’m glad you chose to. These people need to understand that authenticity simply cannot be usurped.
Incidentally - and for what it’s worth - Blackbird Vineyards was also victim to Twitter hijacking.
Good morning, Jeff
This certainly isn’t the message I wanted to read. As I shared with you when you contacted me, we’ve been working various people on our internet marketing strategy, given we honestly don’t have a clue what works and what doesn’t work.
We launched our wesbite, portals and blog through a great company LaBov & Beyond and Plow Digital.
We’ve recently hired Melanie Nayer to assist with our strategy for blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other ventures in this work of “online media”.
Our tie in with MasterCard and other channels online, make this somewhat of a mess but at the end of the day we’re looking to fine out “what works and what doesn’t”. Jury is still out.
Truly the major challenge in our world is we don’t have a clue how it works or what the truly value of the median is. Everyone we’ve been involved with has different responses, different strategies, etc. and we’re not sure who is right. One thing I do know from my past life running my last company http://www.fishbowl.com, database marketing works if used correctly.
We’re actually working on a project w/ http://www.cornerdish.com - allowing people to opt in for restaurant and wine experiences.
We actually met with David Steele in person over two months, checked references, etc and everything came out fine. He’s been speaking about social media to some incredible organizations and actually came recommended to us from another company.
We started to see “traffic” to our website but we’ve been doing so many things we don’t have a clue where the traffic is coming from. Just looking at our web stats now, we’ve seen 7 from Twitter come to our website as of yesterday in the last week. Certainly not setting the world on fire with Twitter!
Please let me know what other questions you might have. Needless to say, we need to figure out what the strategy is and how to figure out how this works. Truly, don’t have a clue.
David,
I think the first thing to understand relative to social media is that nobody is going to give you a silver bullet for what works. It takes an investment of time and money with uncertain returns. Consider: in 2007 nobody was talking about social media, it’s new territory. If you’re asking your vendors and potential vendors for ROI as a part of sales cycle due diligence, you’re probably going to get grey area tactics like somebody faking twitter accounts.
If I were you, given that you’ve worked with an agency like Labov, is to get out of the realm of one-man-band internet marketers who promise to monetize social networks and get with a digital agency that has brand chops.
Jeff
Dave,
I’m puzzled that someone who ran a company like Fishbowl, which advertises itself as a digital marketer, would say “we don’t have a clue how it works or what the truly value of the median is” and would allow themselves to be aligned with unethical practices such as stealing the identity of other businesses for fake twitter accounts, bogus feedback comments and spam attacks.
I think you missed an opportunity here to do some damage control. If you disagree with these tactics you should have said so. The lack of this says a lot about your motives and in digital marketing.
Leah, I’m happy to chat with you one on one. Feel free to contact me if you wish.
Do I agree, no. Do I understand database email marketing absolutely. Do I understand “social media”, not a clue. I see it being used by a lot of people yet, not sure who is using it correctly, how it’s supposed to be used, does it work, who does it best, what are the best practices, etc.
Was I referred to a LOT of organizations recently, most definitely. Needless to say, the choice wasn’t the correct choice.
I think you would agree, database online/email marketing is different than social media. For a Twitter or a Facebook to have an insane valuation of their company yet, they haven’t made a profit, does anyone really no value of social media yet? I think there’s a lot of guessing and a lot of chatter in the market place but someone mention earlier, there’s not a silver bullet.
In my own opinion, we’re going to continue to see what options are out there but needless to say we have to do a better job policing who we work with and their strategies to drive statistics as well as awareness. We certainly haven’t seen anything from this so far except for a giant headache that honestly isn’t worth it.
Happy to chat with you if you wish. Feel free to contact me.
This certainly give all wineries a reason to have a twitter account, even if you don’t plan on using it alot—just to establish your OWN identity online. I suggest creating a spreadsheet of the various site: Twitter, Facebook, etc to remind you to check at least weekly or so, tweet something about your latest release, status of harvest, wine pairing etc, and to see if you’ve been mentioned by others (or received any DMs). The spreadsheet will also serve as a way to keep track of your user names & passwords so you don’t forget. On twitter it also pays to search versions of your own name occasionally.
The other reason to have a twitter account and use it occasionally is that in the current environment you should at the very least be aware of all the possible means of marketing your winery. As to not knowing what works and what doesn’t, I can say with certainty that twitter HAS brought in some entries to our wine competitions, and traffic to our website. So worth ever penny (since it is free, other than time).
Jeff: Thanks for putting this up. A statement like “...we honestly don’t have a clue what works and what doesn’t work…” has about zero credibility. Works? To what end? By what metric?
Here’s a pretty simple rule of thumb I use to assess pitches made to me, and also apply to our own marketing efforts: if a practice is intrusive or in any way unsavory outside of social media, it will be much more so in the context of Twitter, Facebook, etc. It doesn’t work to treat these new media as just another avenue to do crap broadcast marketing.
Really good information, Jeff, and excellent detective work. I’ll share with my liquor license clients, some of whom are just getting started in social media.
I have zero tolerance for spammers, including those who use my website “contact me” box to sell me their “increase your website traffic” services. I respond by sending them my standard “spam” response (which I copy and paste from a word doc I keep on my desktop), and I never hear from them again. It is:
“The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for
those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they
violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.The law, which became effective January 1, 2004, covers email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site. A “transactional or relationship message” – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most
provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, is authorized to
enforce the CAN-SPAM Act. CAN-SPAM also gives the Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to enforce its criminal sanctions.
Other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against organizations under their jurisdiction, and companies that provide
Internet access may sue violators, as well.
Effective 7-7-08, marketers must offer a ‘one page’ opt-out function or simple reply mechanism so that consumers do not have to click through multiple web pages in order to opt-out of future email solicitations. .”
Thanks for the tip about knowem.com. Pardon me while I go check on my online reputation…
thanks for the comments, everybody.
Lauren and Felicia—good advice, as well!
You have all inspired me to focus on providing more informative and resource type link building posts in the future,so stay tuned for more soon.
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It’s new territory. If you’re asking your vendors and potential vendors for ROI as a part of sales cycle due diligence, you’re probably going to get grey area tactics like somebody faking twitter accounts
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Whoever this is behind this scam, they suck and should be destroyed.
Not only am I also getting hit with those bogus DMs, I’m seeing a lot of reply messages coming through with links to the same. See http://twitpic.com/2ilqtw for the latest example.