What’s more, these online reviews wield nearly twice the level of influence as traditional advertising.

Please take a second to let that fully sink in…

That’s right. Online reviews posted by total strangers are nearly twice as effective at influencing what a person decides to buy than whatever you’re saying in your ad campaigns.

While it may be a bitter pill to swallow, it’s high time companies come to grips with the fact consumers aren’t listening to you like they once did – they’re listening to each other.

The disruptive shifts in consumer behavior that have occurred over the last 15 years have clearly put them in control. Companies are under tremendous pressure trying to understand what happened to their profit margins due to pricing transparency, how to handle the damage control from negative online reviews, and leverage the upside from positive online reviews. The viral nature of these product reviews ‘go global’ instantaneously and a problem in Moline can fan the flames in Milan overnight. A positive review posted in Toledo one day can cause an unexpected spike in product sales in Tokyo the next.

That’s why an absolutely rock solid social media strategy is so important.

Even with this fact in mind, most organizations press on without a strategy and approach social media with an “if we build it they will come” mentality, and then are surprised and disappointed when ‘they’ didn’t show up at all.

Prior to launching a social media presence, companies must have a clear understanding of why they’re developing their presence in the first place. For instance, what’s the objective? Is it to generate more leads? Convert existing leads into sales? Measure a marketing campaign? Track brand loyalty? Keep a close eye the competition? Engage customers in meaningful dialogues? Perform market research to determine the feasibility of extending a product line or opening a new distribution center? Has the organization experienced a crisis that requires careful management?

These are just a few examples of questions that executives should have already addressed before they launched into social. If not, then there’s no time like the present to reassess their current social situation and get back to the proverbial drawing board to align social media initiatives with the organization’s strategies and objectives. There should be a social media component for each of the organizational goals.

The realization that consumers don’t want to be interrupted and are paying more attention to online reviews posted by John and Jane Doe than to clever and expensive ad campaigns is likely to bruise some creative director’s egos. But there’s no time for that while business is charging ahead at warp speed. Since consumers are listening to each other more than they’re listening to your ads, are you listening to the consumers?

They’re clearly making themselves heard, but are you really listening?

You need to be listening very closely because consumers are readily sharing what they like, what they don’t like, what they want, what they don’t want; and most importantly, what they value.

Knowing what consumers value is crucial!

That’s why it’s imperative to incorporate the best social media monitoring, data collection and mining into the strategy so companies can obtain relevant data from the social web that provides clear insights to make knowledge-driven decisions for creating value.

The enormity of the very real issues in the first few paragraphs of this article are such that companies can no longer rely on gut instinct to make decisions. Nor can they afford to take the time for ‘old school’ market research that includes developing questionnaires, waiting for the (inherently biased) data to come back, and then analyzed. By the time results from that data reach an organization’s decision makers, the very issues being researched are no longer germane. That model is too slow for the speed of today’s business.

There are huge benefits to using social media monitoring / listening platforms to collect and analyze data into relevant information. Provided the strategies are in place, having such pertinent information at the ready enables organizations to take immediate action wherever necessary.

Armed with an well planned, effective social media strategy, and data collection and mining tools, companies can obtain priceless insights to make knowledge-driven decisions that lead to value creation, competitive advantages, growth, increased revenue and earnings.

Content with your organization’s current ROI?

Now is the time to evolve and leverage the insightful knowledge you need to succeed.

Article is Copr. © by Stephen Monaco and originally published on AdvertisingIndustryNewswire.com. All rights reserved.

However this bastard calls people whose phones are on the national do not call registry which implies he’s either out of the country, scamming Americans with “make a payment now” rip-offs, to get your credit card info, or is a law-breaker who doesn’t understand how to operate a business within the confines of the U.S. legal system. Namely, calling me at home, during dinner, on a number on the do not call registry is enough to get him put on the target practice list of anybody who wants to take down his server and at least complain to his ISP.

So, the number we keep getting calls from is listed as (614) 670-5395, which appears to be in Columbus, Ohio, however that might be wrong as scammers and crooks rarely let you easily locate their hideouts, cribs and caves of evil.

When you actually go to the site (which I did in maximum security mode in IE9 with multiple protection modes on for cookie/malware blocking), the site promotes “Little Ticket to Wealth,” and a sponsor “Referred by: J. Baker, 614-352-2533.”

Here is some of the B.S. Glengarry Glen Ross sales marketing crap on the home page:

Thursday, 11:17 p.m.
From: Hilton Newark Airport Hotel, New Jersey, Room 1122

Dear Future Renegade / Top Doer / Big Gun…
It’s simple. If you’re serious about taking your income to the next level, regardless of whether it’s $1k a month, $10K a month or $100K a month, then you need a steady, predictable flow of new leads each month to present your opportunity, products and services too. If you question this undeniable FACT, then go ask ANY top earner in ANY home based business if they could continue to thrive without a FRESH, PREDICTABLE flow of high quality leads each month.

High quality “leads?” You mean harrass and scam fools and cretins you can steal from? Yeah right.

A 24 hour recorded message can be found at 1-800-645-1891 x101, which might be worth tracking down the phone provider to that service to file a complaint, although he lists a cell phone number (below). Maybe you should fire up your own robo-dialers to hit that number NOW!

When you do a reverse lookup on the domain, you see all the data is hidden, since they don’t want you to know who you’re actually doing “business” with in your MLM or make money at home scam. But here’s the data. Appears to be registered at ENOM, so perhaps send them a complaint, not that they will do anything about it.

Domain Name: GENERATEMONEYNOW .BIZ
Domain ID: D26146176-BIZ
Sponsoring Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 48
Registrar URL (registration services): whois .enom .com
Domain Status: ok
Registrant ID: 229D8644D9C
Registrant Name: WhoisGuard Protected
Registrant Organization: WhoisGuard
Registrant Address1: 8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 -
Registrant City: Westchester
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 90045
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Country Code: US
Registrant Phone Number: +1.6613102107

Name Server: DNS1.REGISTRAR-SERVERS .COM
Name Server: DNS2.REGISTRAR-SERVERS .COM
Name Server: DNS3.REGISTRAR-SERVERS .COM
Created by Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Last Updated by Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Domain Registration Date: Sat Jul 19 00:30:58 GMT 2008
Domain Expiration Date: Mon Jul 18 23:59:59 GMT 2011
Domain Last Updated Date: Mon Jul 12 15:18:49 GMT 2010.

On the home page, however, an address is listed as Little Ticket To Wealth, 2789 E. State St. Ste 185, Salem, Ohio, 44460. Email is listed as “littletickettowealth @ gmail.com.” The person listed on the “about us” page is “Tim Berger.” His cell phone is listed as “330.881.3026/cell” – so feel free to call him back and tell him to fu** off for breaking the law.

His hilarious signature line on the site says “Lets fight for Prosperity, Abundance and Freedom together.” Yeah, my freedom has been repeatedly violated by you asshole. Suck it.

So, to file a complaint with the national do not call registry next time you hear from these scum-bags, go here: https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2 .

Simply put in the phone number (614) 670-5395, time called, and company “GenerateMoneyNow .BIZ” and call is recording, with no option to opt-out. They will call again, and again unless you complain. And even then they might just move on to a new domain. Crooks like to keep scams going once they get shut down so beware.

MAKE MONEY AT HOME OFFERS ARE SCAMS … AVOID DOING BUSINESS WITH ANYBODY WHO BREAKS THE LAW TO CALL YOU AT HOME PROMOTING ANY SUCH OFFERING, OR WHO ASK YOU TO VISIT THEIR WEBSITE TO PROVIDE ANY PERSONAL INFO, OR WHO ROBO-CALL YOU. LAW BREAKERS WILL BREAK MORE THAN ONE LAW. Don’t be scammed!

Disclaimer: while we don’t know for sure the person, company, website, phone and emails listed in the above are crooks, they have violated my privacy, the laws of the U.S. and California, repeatedly, and this means you should exercise extreme caution in doing business with them. The information listed is from their website, and is publicly visible and may be researched yourself if you want to risk it.

A simple example would be if a small publishing website, for example my own AscoliBooks.com, decides to increase its traffic by secretly inserting Amazon.com into its key words / phrases list. This list is hidden. But it might seriously increase the little publisher’s ranking. Amazon takes a dim view of this practice, as well it should.

Why? Because it infers an affiliation or a relationship between the sites that does not, in fact, exist. It also may be violative of copyright and trademark protection.

That’s an easy example. The true pirates do a lot more than that. Our site received an email from someone who had their site “featured” in the hidden keywords of another site. It was an e-greeting card company from Australia that complained. Someone had used their name, along with the trade name “Hallmark” and other similar or household card names in their keyword list.

Here’s what the CEO sent to me recently: I have added “xxx” to delete identifying information.

I am the legal compliance officer and CEO of E-Info XXX XXX the owner and operator of e-xxxx.xxx.xx

Please remove e-xxx.xxx.xx from your keywords otherwise we will instruct our lawyers to commence legal action- passing off is a breach of ALL commercial practices codes of conduct.

I would also suggest that you remove the other “trademarks and Copyright labels in your keywords as you are only inviting extensive and costly legal action

The matter will be reported to ICANN and WIPO- If you can’t do business ethically and with principle then don’t do it!

I also notice that you use exxxxx.com in your domain header / description – Unless you have their permission I would suggest you remove their name from your key words

That sort of got right to it.

I try to get the point across to readers that “fairness” should be your ultimate test. It’s amazing how often “legal” fits inside fairness.

TOO CLEVER BY HALF is an expression that we use in the southern U.S. I don’t know if it has gone transnational yet. Clearly it means that some clever person who thought he was a genius only got it half right – and is usually in deep trouble.

The greeting card company may have actually trademarked their website name. It’s unusual to do this but big companies should do it as soon as they know they are going to be big. I hope that’s you someday. There is some copyright protection in so far as your website should have a copyright notice on it. For example “(c) 2010 greengiantplastics.xyz”. Copyright infringement practice is not my stock in trade so I’m not going to go too far out on a limb here. But, as a general rule, titles are not copyrightable. However, there is a common practice and belief that a domain name is the sole property some person or entity. It is not quite a brand name but it certainly carries some status of ownership and the right to use with it and an identification that carries value. No one is allowed to trade off the value that my trade name or domain name associated with it.

Further, the basis of most trademark infringement litigation is based not just on legal registration but on the fact that a customer can become confused if someone else uses a name that belongs to or was first used in commerce by someone else. It’s fair and it’s the law.

Now as to our latest genius who stacked the deck in his favor using a lot of other folk’s domain names with the hope it will increase his traffic rankings – and thus making more money. These keywords are usually “hidden” and are written for the search engine spiders to find. Therefore you’d never know if someone were bootstrapping their business on the back of your hard work to give their domain name higher ranking.

Lesson: it never hurts to have a look sometimes at competitive sights that may use your domain name in hidden key words. This is not my area of expertise, but running a search on your domain name from time to time may find interesting websites attached to your domain name for no apparent reason. You or your web designer can get behind the html code and have a look at the “keywords” of which yours is one, on strange websites.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), late last year, published rules mandating that websites and bloggers disclose relationships that are not readily apparent. That means that if I pay a blogger to “promote” my site, I have to disclose this on the blog and on my website. I wish I could afford a great paid blogger that I’d have to disclose but it’s usually me, late at night, who is writing to give folks information with hopes of getting traffic for my site. And that’s what you should be doing too. And I always disclose the relationship between me and the website.

As I have discussed in other reports, this just makes sense. Some folks feel it’s a bad thing to disclose relationships. I say the FTC mandated free advertising for me to shamelessly promote myself and link it to the website. The glass half full or half empty.

Back to fraudulent keywords. Clearly a casual visitor does not see the keywords. Yet their presence may have digitally drawn them to a site that had rankings that it only got by fraud or trickery. I think there is a logical belief that the FTC disclosure requirement of relationships unknown to visitors is applicable here. In addition to whatever copyright and trademark rights are involved.

A visible cousin is cyber squatting and so-called typo-squatting. Both of dubious legality but oftentimes quite lucrative.

The tank also appears in the June 2010 issue of Playboy magazine, being worn by super-hottie and Playmate of the Year, Hope Dworaczyk (she also wears the “Fangbanger” apparel in the same story and says if she were a shape shifter she would obviously shift into a “bunny” – hah hah ha).

The “V I L F” tank sells for $19.99 at the HBO online store. Other fan gear is available with phrases like “Real Blood is for Suckers.” Mugs can be had with “welcome to Bon Temps,” and “Fangtasia” pint glasses. The usual cheesy “I Love Sookie” T-shirts, and junk with the images of the cast.

I tried the bottled “true blood” soda, but didn’t particularly care for it. A bit too syrupy and too many ingredients to be good for any long term substitute for the “real thing.” If you want to really mess with people at your next PTA meeting, the “American Vampire League” T-shirt might be a good choice.

HBO has also posted a preview trailer teaser for True Blood Season 3. The show is awesome, and the vampire craze shows no sign of waning anytime soon.

You can see the VILF tank here:
http://store.hbo.com/detail.php?p=262694&v=hbo_shows_true-blood .

Promo video follows:

If you look on YouTube there is all kinds of “Mandura” marketing crap, and funnily enough they’re using “scam” videos to try to get you to look at whether it’s a scam, but then try to convince you to get on board the fruit juice gold digger train. (Really?) What’s funny, too, is if you type in “mandura juice scam” in Google the first five pages of results are all about the supposed scam, where the MLM folks are making up pages of junk sites content to get you to go there to find out if it’s a scam. Junk PR sites, junk article sites, etc. — but don’t be fooled. And if you want to get involved with law breakers, then you get what you deserve.

Basically, if you’ve seen all the spam for Mangosteen juice, for Acai Berry, and related junk, this is the latest thing.

The 501-691-3245 phone number has been reported to the FTC for violating my privacy rights, and my phone number being on the national do not call list. Also sent a note off to the California state attorneys general office about the violation of both the robocalling law and privacy law violations on “Chris Hogan’s” various sites. He “appears” to be in Arkansas. I’ll have to look up the State AG in Arkansas to file complaint.

TO REPORT A ROBOCALLER TO THE FTC for calling your home number on the do-not-call registry, go here:
https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2 .

The site being pushed in the robo-call is “StormofWealth(.com)” which redirects to “StormofWealth(.net)” – as in “storm of wealth.” Suuuuuuure. Want to buy this bridge I have out back? It’s a keeper, and you can make internet millions and all the honeys will love you with that big bridge in your back yard. Aw, c’mon, it’s a multi-level bridge. Double decker, even.

What cracks me up is using this tagline on one of the sites, “presented by Rev. Chris & Angelique Hogan” ((chogan.mandurarep(.com))… as if being a Reverend means anything good in the world of questionable MLM. When you break the law, being a “Rev” doesn’t mean God absolves you of your evil doing, brother, and accept this gilt edged invitation to hell. Or, H E double hockey sticks, pal.

Here is the WHOIS record for “StormofWealth(.net)”:

Registration Service Provided By: 1COMS .COM
Contact: +44.7773590344

Status:ACTIVE.

The server seems to land at a Mumbai, India hosting company, mydosty(.com), with an IP of 75.127.68.101. What’s funny is if you type in the IP for hostluck(.com), listed as the name servers, it comes up with an “this account has been suspended” message. So, you can see there is a bit of jiggery pokery going on behind the scenes with the companies hosting these sites. And, of course, since it’s in India, we can’t really complain about the site owner (Mr/Mrs Hogan) violating US/California laws. They don’t care. Thank you India for making robo-calling such a money maker for your companies and fracking off so many US citizens.

The Storm of Wealth site appears to be living as a shared IP at 75.127.68.98. For those of you wanting to block the IP range in your firewall(s), you can likely block the 75.127.68.1/24 IP range and be happy keeping the scum out of your mailbox, too.

As always, worth noting that the mandura rep site is in violation of various privacy laws including California’s privacy law. The ManduraRep site seems to be an MLM powered by the upstream www.mlmteamsites(.com). With “MLM” in the domain name, you know it’s “gotta be good.” And that site seems to be owned by MLMpublicity(.com) is a division of TenBrink International (a one man company, apparently, aka “Ryan Tenbrink” in Carrolton, TX; one BBB complaint).

So, Rev. Chris Hogan, thank jesus as today you are this week’s award winner for official robo-calling scum of the week. Congratulations.

In going to the website being promoted by the illicit robo-caller, we find (big surprise) what looks to be a come-on to make money using a “secret marketing breakthrough!” The site proclaims they have “discovered a secret so powerful it literally ‘POURS’ Cash Directly Into Your Pocket Automatically!!” (capitalized words and double exclamation points from the site).

Besides the fact the site is collecting name, email and phone information (personal information), and does not display a legally required or California law compliant privacy statement, it claims there is “no MLM or Network Marketing.”

From the looks of it, I might suspect it’s one of the wide ranging “cash gifting” scams going around, and which have been widely covered on the TV news here in California.

Since there is only a one-page site (a sure sign of a money making scam, for anybody who has seen these before), the HTML title tag shows “Ez1up Cash System” and the sign-up form is being loaded from aweber(.com), a site offering “email marketing campaign” services, auto-responders, and other bric-a-brac often used by evil-doers on the Web.

I sent a query off to “AWber Communications” which claims to be in Huntingdon Valley, PA, informing of the mis-use of their services. We’ll see if we get a reply.

In looking up what info we could on the domain, the registrant appears to be somebody called “Bo Small” in New York, based on the domain record:

Whois Record Search

Registrant Search:”Bo Small” owns about 58 other domains Email Search: is associated with about 106 domains

Registrar History:1 registrar with 1 drop. NS History:8 changes on 6 unique name servers over 4 years. IP History:4 changes on 3 unique name servers over 4 years. Whois History:6 records have been archived since 2009-12-29 .

Registrant:
Bo Small
300 W St
Buffalo, New York 14201
United States

Domain Name: TURBOATM .COM
Created on: 28-Dec-09
Expires on: 28-Dec-10
Last Updated on: 28-Dec-09

The domain servers, seem to be (apparently owned by GoDaddy)
NS27.DOMAINCONTROL .COM
NS28.DOMAINCONTROL .COM

The reverse domain lookup seems to lead to the IP 64.202.189.170, which is owned by GoDaddy (*to clarify: it means GoDaddy hosts the site for the believed scammers/robo-caller, it does NOT mean GoDaddy has anything to do with the site! GoDaddy is a good company.). Complaints can be sent to the hosting provider, which is GoDaddy at: abuse@godaddy.com.

An entry has been made at “whocalled.us” for the offending originating phone number where the calls originated (http://whocalled.us/lookup/2063509029).

Remember – it’s against the law to call phone numbers on the national “do not call” registry. Robo-calling is against the law in certain locales, like California. Companies that robo-call any of our staff, family, employees, or companies will be glorified with this dubious award of distinction.

So, congratulations “TurboATM-COM” – you’re this week’s winner of the scumbag robocaller of the week award.

Next week we apparently have some signage show in Vegas calling with free pass info. Hooo boy. Lookout! More robo-calling scum to feature. Stay tuned, party people.

There are other grounds for everyone to hate us. Hell, after seeing most of these ads, I hate us. What is more to the point, I am ashamed to admit that I have anything to do with the advertising profession. Other than making money from it, of course.

Okay, on to the ads.

Rogaine Hair Growth Scam Foam
The procession of hype got off to a tacky start with a cheesy bit of sleaze. This spot made everyone in the room say “eeauw.”

Callaway Golf Clubs
Nifty production with nice graphics and lots of fast cuts. The whole thing screams “high tech” but there’s no way to tell what the hell is going on. Why is the golf club good? Why should anyone care? Around here, we believe everyone who plays golf should be quickly killed (except for those who feel their death should be as slow as possible) so it’s difficult to give this ad the benefit of the doubt.

Hyundai Sonata
The Korean carmaker bought a whole fleet of commercials, all featuring cool and assured voiceover work from Jeff Bridges. The first spot offered some nice sheet metal shots. No big deal, but the car looked great. Another ad showed part of the automaker’s painting process. It made the Sonata look like it had about three inches of coating and convinced me to go see the car up close. In a wonderful change-up, one of their spots showed Brett Favre’s acceptance speech for the 2020 MVP award. As we were chuckling, Mr. Bridges gently reminded us that we cannot know about ten years in the future except for the fact that Hyundai’s 10-year warranty will still be in effect. Wonderful.

Bud Light, Budweiser, Michelob
Also purchasing a passel of promo announcements was Anheuser-Busch, the beer-making giant (nearly 50% of the U.S. market with 100 different brands). One of their Bud Light spots featured a house constructed out of the product, which probably made some folks laugh, in the same way that some people still laugh at SNL sketches. Another spot was a parody of “Lost,” which might be entertaining for those who watch “Lost.” One commercial was pretty cool, with party-goers’ voices filtered through an Antares Auto-Tune. A Michelob Light ad showcased Lance Armstrong and, well, I don’t know what the hell was going on in the ad (or I just was so unimpressed that I can’t recall any of it). One Budweiser spot seemed to suggest cross-species dating between a horse and bull; not certain what this has to do with beer. Another spot for Budweiser had people forming a human bridge to allow a Bud delivery truck to cross a stream. Why? How? Can you say “listen to the sound of crickets” while we wait for the nervous laughter? I mean, seriously, guys, WTF? People, why do you purchase products made by firms that hold you in such contempt? (And BTW, what’s with using Elmer Bernstein’s score for “Stripes” on the spot? It’s brilliant music, but for the licensing fee you could have hired an up-and-coming composer to create something new.)

Snickers
The idea of Betty White and Abe Vigoda playing on tackle football teams in the park is humorous. The idea. But not the script, direction, editing, or acting. Snickers left a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Pam and Tim Tebow
Here’s the controversial spot for anti-family-planning that rightwingnuts at CBS approved for some reason. Best line from the party when this spot finished: “If only Pam had been aborted we wouldn’t have to endure this.” (Image from spot, shown at left.)

Boost Mobile
Wow, talk about stupid ads. If ever there was a way to tell people you are an antiquated, out-of-date, know-nothing firm, it would be to use a nursery rhyme rap with irrelevant spokespeople like half-dead ex-Chicago Bears football players.

Robin Hood
Hey, look, they’re re-releasing the Kevin Costner movie! No? Oh, that must mean the Mel Brooks “Men in Tights” spoof is coming back with a portentous soundtrack. No? Well, it couldn’t be that Ridley Scott has now descended even lower than when he made a “Silence of the Lambs” sequel and is now doing a . . . dare I say it? . . . remake! How the mighty have fallen.

Doritos
Several spots, all snarky, but some got laughs, such as the one where a little kid slaps a would-be suitor to his mom. Others, such as a guy eating while inside a coffin, had the effect of equating Doritos with the urge to vomit.

GoDaddy.com
I like cheesecake, pretty girls, and double entendres as much as the next guy, but most of the GoDaddy.com spots are just so-so. They work at getting your attention, but they tell you little about the company. However, I use GoDaddy.com for my web site hosting and since they provide superb customer service every time I call with a question, I am going to give them a pass. (Now, if they could only get THAT point across in one of their commercials.)

Bridgestone Tires
These folks are a puzzle to me. They have a product that interests me and almost every guy who drives a car or truck. They spend a ton of money producing their commercials. Yet they never show their tires or demonstrate any product benefit. What’s up with that? A speeding truck skids and spins to a halt. A speeding car safely stops on a slick highway. Yeah, so? Unless you tell me why a Bridgestone tire does this more efficiently, effectively, more safely, or for less money, I’m going to buy Goodyear or Michelin or Continental or Pirelli or anybody that tells me something about tread, traction, handling, etc.

Cars.com
Ultra-successful guy’s life is shown but it turns out he’s nervous about buying a car. So Cars.com is his choice to resolve that problem. It made me smile and it showed how their service might help me in the future. Of course, since it doesn’t feature people acting stupidly, it won’t win any audience polls. But it will HELP SELL THE PRODUCT, which some people in this industry seem to have overlooked.

Careerbuilder.com
We are as grossed out as the spot’s narrator as he tries to avoid looking too closely at the work force showing up in underwear for “casual day.” So I’d try to find another job, too. But how does this demonstrate that Careerbuilder.com is the place for the job search? Hey, maybe he landed this bad job through that site.

Dockers
Immediately following the underwear brigade was the “I wear no pants” patrol. It’s like when you open the newspaper movie section and see ads for “Legion” and “Tooth Fairy” and they both feature a guy with large white wings.

Dove for Men
YGTBFKM. This abomination appears designed to drive men away from the products. Perhaps the idea is to convince women they should buy this crap for their husbands and boyfriends.

Dodge
Oh wait, now YGTBFKM. Really, this must be seen to be believed. The message of the commercial is: whipped guys drive Dodge.

Acura ZDX
Great music track and nice shots of the vehicle. Okay, it’s not award-winning and won’t score high in the polls. But it will make me check out the car. Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that was the point of doing a commercial.

Living Spaces and Carl’s Jr.
Ahh, local dreck bringing everything down a notch with their cheapo craptacular approach to advertising.

Carmax
Wait, here’s a national spot that is confusing and stupid. Something about animals watching auto sales on television? The marketing team was combining Jim Beam with lysergic acid diethylamide.

Monster.com
Okay, there’s this violin-playing beaver. It’s funny already, right? Yeah, so, he plays for tips in the street and then uses Monster.com to move up in the world, until he plays Carnegie Hall and ends up cavorting in a hot tub with a predatory blonde.

Wrap Up:
There were several million more commercials in the broadcast, but they made me so sick to my stomach that I stopped watching. Anyone who endures that much crap is a moron or owns stock in one of the advertising firms. Ain’t that America.

An article from A.P. in BusinessWeek (among other places, http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9DGTGVG3.htm ), points to a story titled “Blue Cross agrees to pay $95K on illegal robocalls.” According to the story from Jan. 28, 2010, “North Carolina’s largest health insurer agreed to pay $95,000 to resolve a dispute with the state over 100,000 ‘robocalls’ pushing the company’s views on the national health care debate, officials for the state and the company said Thursday.”

So, looks like California will need to hunt them down next. Evil evil evil. Basically these companies should learn that nobody will do business with a “robocaller,” whether it’s pushing a political agenda, promoting a scumbag local business offering chiropractic services (I got about 100 of those last year before the new law took hold), or from any international company promoting lower insurance rates, or credit card refinancing (yeah, like I’m going to do business with a middle east company asking for my credit card and personal info).

I won’t vote for ANY political campaign that robo-calls me, and will never do business with any company doing robo-dialing. Frack you Blue Cross, and the horse your CEO rode in on.

According to the AP story, “Blue Cross spokesman Lew Borman said the company on Wednesday paid the $95,000 penalty, which will go to the public schools, according to the settlement. The agreement also requires the company to create written guidelines for its employees and vendors to ensure they comply with the robocall rules.”

Hey, did you know we have laws in California governing your crappy marketing? Check out this PDF on the cpuc.ca.gov website: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/51D7DD5B-9902-4C3B-9EB3-B75F56CBB4C2/0/080129_RobocallADAD_FAQ.pdf .

According to the above document:
When can robocalls (ADADs) be used? What companies or agencies can use them?
Robocalls are only legal when introduced by a live person unless:
1) You are a member or a client of a company or organization that uses them to deliver messages (such as an announcement about a sale) or; 2) The police, fire or emergency service agency uses them to contact you about an emergency.

According tor the CPUC:
What can I do if I receive a robocall that I think is illegal?
1) Call your local telephone company to file a complaint. You must give them the name of who called and if possible the telephone number of the robocaller (it may be provided in the message.)
2) Your telephone company will then tell the business that it is not following the law and may give it some time to correct the problem.
3) If the business does not correct the use of the robocaller by the time given by the telephone company, the telephone company can disconnect the phone line.
4) If you are not satisfied with the telephone company’s response to your robocall complaint, you may contact the CPUC’s Consumer Affairs Branch by filing a complaint online at http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/forms/Complaints/ or by telephone at 1-800-649-7570 or in writing to:
California Public Utilities Commission Consumer Affairs Branch 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102-3298.

Check your local state government website for similar laws. It’s a good idea to look at your caller ID and write down each phone number, especially if it’s an 866 (toll free), or an out of area (sometimes doesn’t show number). Keep pen and pad by the phone, and write down the number on your ID. Get in the habit. This will allow you to file complaints against these scumbag companies and eventually your state may go after them, if applicable. Of course, you can’t do anything about the calls coming from India (etc.), but many of these robo-callers think they have the right to harass you.

And bozos like Anthem use a system which will keep calling you EVERY DAY until you listen to their stupid message, and sit through the verbal feedback system to identify 1) the person calling is not available (they then ask to leave message), then 2) identify they have called the wrong number.

If you’re a customer, call their support number and ask them how to remove your phone number from ALL sales calls. If they fail to help you, ask how to cancel your policy.

Yeah, get in gear asshole. You (Anthem Blue Cross) just won our award for biggest scumbag robo-calling corporate prick of the month. Congratulations.

Notably, there are several things wrong with this “partnership” message. First, we already got a couple of these sent to our other sites (addressed to different named individuals). Second, there is nobody at our company, nor has there ever been, anybody named “Gordon” — which can clearly be found by looking at the staff page on our site. Third, we are a highly respected newswire service, and so why would we want to post another companies client’s on our site? That’s like calling up Pepsi and asking them if they would like to include some Coke product in their end-caps at the supermarket. Doh. Of course, since this is spam, they had no actual interest in a partnership, since they didn’t bother to look at the site they were sending it to, look at who runs the company, etc.

All the spam originated from 208.82.15.227.rainbowbroadband.com, and we sent a complaint (well, two actually) to the Rainbow Broadband admin listed at ARIN. Apparently an ISP located in New York.

If you type in the IP in Firefox, you also get this warning:
This Connection is Untrusted
You have asked Firefox to connect
securely to 208.82.15.227:4443, but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure.

In Internet Explorer, once you get past the bad security cert warning, the browser pops up a login/password dialog. This is common with log-ins for spam / bulk email applications.

It’s really too bad these start-ups and “also ran” companies feel compelled to spam businesses and websites in order to build an audience; why not buy advertising in the PR industry magazines if you’re serving the PR industry? Why not buy Google AdWords? Spam is the last choice for a company without moral character, in my opinion, and any company that sends bulk “unsolicited” (meaning the recipient didn’t ASK FOR IT) email should be banned from having Internet access.

In the case of this “company” spamming our sites with their fake partnership emails, which are nothing more than requests for website owners to carry their content. And they aren’t offering to pay the people receiving the spam, either. Wow – you want me to post your content on MY site for free? Suuuuuure.

Of course, on our contact us page it also states “do not send us partnership requests.” But since no human actually visited our site(s) before sending us all the spam, I shouldn’t expect manners or consideration.

I feel bad for their “2000 clients” who are now a party to this bad business practice, and who will likely eventually find their content on a block list along with anything this company does, thanks to their spam blasts.

In doing a reverse lookup at DomainTools for their main domain name, we can see a lot of IP changes over the years and folks who change the name server for their site 5 times in 4 years, usually means they are getting kicked off a system once their evil is uncovered (not sure if that applies here, just saying we’ve seen that to be the case in the past):
NS History – myprgenie . com :
5 changes on 5 unique name servers over 4 years.
IP History:
7 changes on 8 unique name servers over 5 years.

Follows is the spam email in question, for your enjoyment, derision, and if you need to validate your own complaints to Rainbow Broadband in a spam complaint.

Not sure yet whether we’ll send you a trophy, a certificate, or just include you in the annual roundup of the biggest spammers we’ve been annoyed by in 2010. Good job PRgenie!

In a relatively unscientific test we bought pizzas from several Domino’s outlets, both delivery and pick-up, and put the new round meals to the test. What we found, however, had more to do with the creation of the pizzas than the ingredients, in this simple test. One pizza was slightly over-cooked (almost burnt on the bottom), one had too much “brushed garlic” on the crust (must have used a house painting brush versus a chef’s brush, more oil than garlic), and one had none of the new garlic on the crust. It’s a new recipe, but the same old crew.

On the one with the best overall construction and balance, we did find that the sauce was better and a little more sauce than on past purchases, the cheese tasted more like a restaurant and less like those $1 per box frozen pizzas many of us had when we were either in school or first fled the next into our first apartments. The sauce was a little sweeter, and had some red pepper in it, and so had more of a sense you were eating restaurant pizza than a fast food product. The cheese did have more taste, and the mix of more than one type of cheese really helped. Crust was better, except the one with too much oil (seriously, three times more than it needed).

When done right, the new pizza is a definite improvement. I would have to say, I don’t find myself wanting to throw half of it away the next day as the last time I bought their product locally (in Southern Calif.); on the other hand, it was not as good as a comparable cost pizza from Papa John’s in my opinion, at least.

Stephen Colbert tried the new pizza on his show, on January 6, and whether you believe him or not, he claims the pizza is better (“did an angel just gave birth in my mouth”), but hilariously rips on how the old pizza was truly truly awful. He called Domino’s Pizza his “Alpha Dog of the Week.” (It’s funny to hear the audience vocally cringe as he’s about to take the first bite.)

CBS’s The Early Show did a report on the new effort, and the staff gave the new taste high marks.

Domino’s has also setup a website, at www.pizzaturnaround.com where they are actively doing both viral marketing and archiving industry and media response to their new campaign.

Surprise! If I were on a desert island and had the choice between coconut skins roasted on the fire or Domino’s new pizza, I would prefer the new pizza. It’s not superb, but it doesn’t entirely suck. Room for improvement, yes; but primarily in the efforts of the crews building the pizzas and baking them. Better than the box it’s delivered in? Definitely a yes.