Tag Archives: ethics

September 4, 2012 · 8:59 am

Fake Traffic

You probably have read about fake Twitter followers.  Most people have some (1% of mine are), famous people have lots (Justin Bieber has 14%).  You can check out the fake or inactive counts at Status People.  Obviously I haven’t gone out to acquire fake followers but like every part of the interwebs, Twitter has its share of  spammers and other flavors of cretin and they leach on to legitimate folks all the time.

That’s very different from folks who create fake accounts to add to their follower totals and very far removed from folks who go out and buy followers.  I suppose that the quantity of an audience is important to some people who market themselves based on their Twitter base or Klout score.  It’s been interesting as I pitch new business to have potential clients ask about that and how their minds change a bit after they understand how the system can be gamed.  Caveat Emptor if you’re hiring based on that and not on business acumen – it’s much harder to buy!

One way a system is gamed that I find really disturbing is the sale of web traffic.  No, I don’t mean impressions being sold to advertisers as ad space but the sale of bulk traffic to websites looking to increase their numbers.  There are a number of firms – I’m not going to plug them here – who will generate visits to your website for a fee.  Need 100,000 visits quickly?  $250 will get them for you.  Obviously for sites that sell based on rate bases or on impression guarantees, this is a form of fraud.

How do they do this?  Some companies use bots – automated scripts.  Others pay people to do nothing but click on the list of pages they’re given.  Still others push pop-unders which display the purchasing site when a user hits some other site the vendor controls.  Others use redirects from abandoned domains.  Pretty questionable stuff.

I’m told that some rather prominent sites use these firms near the end of a month when their traffic is kind of light.  I sure hope not.  This is exactly the kind of thing that will set back digital advertising 10 years just as it’s getting a fair amount of traction.  I can’t imagine what these folks are thinking.  Like the lightweight consultants who buy followers and game the reputation system, once this found out, those same systems will be used to spread the word about their duplicity.  Skeevy, right?

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August 31, 2012 · 8:07 am

Forced Endorsements

 

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week isn’t directly about food

English: American cook, author, and television...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

at all but about one of the most entertaining people ever to prepare it. That would be Julia Child, about whom I’ve expressed my admiration before. I’m not sure if you’re following what is going on with her estate and the Thermador people but it instructive on a number of levels.
Let me say at the outset that I own a Thermador oven. Two of them, in fact, and I’m quite happy with them, so there’s no axe to grind against the company. That said, they’re behaving badly.  You see, they’ve been using the fact that Julia Child had a Thermador ovens in her home and TV kitchens as the basis for an implied endorsement.  So much so that magazine ads that showed photos of Julia and two of the brand’s ovens with the caption, “An American Icon and Her American Icons.”

Well, you say, sounds like a typical celebrity endorsement.  As we all know the notion is that people who like the celebrity will like the product the celebrity likes too.  There’s only problem.  Julia Child NEVER endorsed products.  Nothing.  She always felt she was a teacher, and anything that wasn’t of the highest quality could undermine her reputation.  The foundation that owns her intellectual property has sued since they were never approached in advance of the use and turned down a license when they were since they won’t license her name or image for endorsements.  Pretty straightforward so far.

Here is what’s interesting.  Thermador is claiming it’s not an endorsement.  As the L.A. Times reported, they:

filed a suit in Boston on Friday asking a federal judge to make a legal declaration that they had the right to use Child’s connection to the brand in its marketing materials. In its complaint, BSH’s lawyers wrote that the company’s use of Child’s photo and name “do not state or imply any endorsement” but “reflect on the long history, significance and influence of Thermador products on American society and culture.”

Right.  It’s a statement of fact.  So if an athlete is photographed drinking a Coke, it’s fine if Coke uses that statement of fact in an ad.  I don’t think so.  More importantly, to those of us who admire Julia, this is having exactly the opposite effect as an endorsement.  You can’t force people to endorse your products, you can’t use their likeness without permission, and you can’t rationalize your way into it being OK.  This is a good lesson on why bad behavior seldom works out in business. I can’t imagine anyone who has ever done anything in marketing wouldn’t have known that this is wrong.

Thermador, I use your products and like them – feel free to use that endorsement.  But stop behaving badly, please.  You’re better than this, or at least your ovens are.

 

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July 16, 2012 · 9:55 am

Why Is Wrong In Life OK In Business?

I had something else planned for today’s screed but after getting through the newspapers over the weekend I changed my mind. I don’t know if it’s struck you as it has me but I’m really surprised how many business stories are about willful acts of corruption and greed. One could, in fact, make the argument that much of the economic crisis in which nearly every country finds itself has at its root exactly that cause. Is there anyone left who thinks the housing bubble and mortgage crisis was an accident?

Let me give you a few examples, just from yesterday’s newspaper:

Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole – a story of how Goldman may have negligently mismanaged a company’s sale and sold it to con men:

With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when Lernout & Hauspie was revealed to be a spectacular fraud.

Then there is the LIBOR case:

Authorities around the globe are examining whether financial firms manipulated interest rates before and after the financial crisis to improve their profits and deflect scrutiny about their health.

Big pharma?

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced a settlement with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The company had, among a host of criminal actions, helped publish falsified data in a medical journal, failed to report the dangers of a drug and used “favors” like trips to Jamaica to persuade doctors to use its medications for unapproved — and unproven — purposes on children.

Think it’s only financial business that’s affected?

The head of Germany’s football league has called on Sepp Blatter to resign over the FIFA bribery scandal.  Reinhard Rauball told Germany’s Welt Online that Blatter should step down as soon as possible so that FIFA can make a fresh start.

Maybe I’m just an old hippie from a distant time, but this stuff is just wrong.  Simple, right?  You could explain right and wrong to a child fairly easily.  So why does that go out the window when there’s “business” involved?  What’s really scary to me is that no one has gone to jail for any of this stuff – companies have paid fines but no individual has been held accountable (and we all know it’s not just one person).

I’m willing to bet that no matter on which side of the political spectrum you fall we can agree that stealing, bribery, bid rigging, and selling drugs you know aren’t safe isn’t right.  What we can do about it is to call it what it is – bad, maybe criminal behavior – and not stand for it.  Don’t do business with people who permit individuals to behave this way.  I almost wrote companies” there but corporations are legal entities, not people.  It won’t get better until somebody is held accountable in a very public way and jailed.   We as a society and community of business people must demonstrate that competing hard and winning are OK, but not at any cost.  After all, every sport has a rulebook and certain actions will get you penalized or kicked out of the game.  Why not business?

Are you as frustrated as I am?

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