Internet Marketing’s Unseemly Underbelly: A Cautionary Case Study for Wineries
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: