I will not market products that don't work. (At least, not knowingly. I have been duped—more on that in a moment.) That has meant saying NO to, and sometimes angering, prospective clients who were ready to spend.

Products that I have declined include: 

• Multi-level marketing schemes (also known as network marketing). To be clear, some are legit. But generally in MLM, the product is secondary; what's really for sale is the unattainable dream of quickly building a downline, getting rich quick, and quitting your day job after just a few months. The only people who get rich in these schemes are those who enroll in them early. Later enrollees are their prey.

• Alternative medicines and alleged nutritional products. Most are flimflam. If you don't believe me, read their disclaimers. Those that aren't flimflam can interfere with other medications and have side effects, so they should be used only under the supervision of a real doctor. (Note: a real doctor. Not a chiropractor, naturopath, acupuncturist, aura manipulator, psychic healer, etc.) Never mind the so-called clinical studies. If I wanted, I could produce a clinical study showing that listening to Prokofiev instead of Mozart will make you live longer. (Come to think of it, though that's not true, it should be.)

• Purported stock market prediction products/systems. They don't work. All they do is encourage people, many of whom can't afford to lose, to risk foolishly.

• Weight-loss hypnotherapy. There is still only one proven weight-loss method: eat less, eat smarter, and exercise more. Trouble is, there's not much money in that plan. No valid test has shown hypnosis to be of any effect.

• Astrology. It's bunk.

• A lobbying group that would scare the daylights out of anyone who thinks highly of the First Amendment.

• Subliminal self-improvement CDs. You know, the kind you play while you're asleep. Bogus.

I am sorry to say that, a few times, I have been duped into selling products which I later learned didn't work. Here are a few:

• Stock market prediction software. I took on this client before I knew better. They were great people, most of whom I think believed their product worked. Though, looking back, it is curious that no one in the company used the software to get rich—except by selling it.

• An antioxidant product. Never mind what you've read to the contrary. Antioxidants don't do anything but cost you money. I didn't know that at the time.

• A high-tech device. Devices of this type work. But, three years after the account moved to another agency, I learned that the engineers of this one had lied to me about their patented chip's advantages. Evaluating their claims required expertise and high-tech toys unavailable to me, so I believed the PhDs and wrote ads based on what they told me. I'm still mad. (I lack sufficient documentation to fend off a lawsuit, so for now I must be silent on the details.)

Thank goodness there are still plenty of legitimate products for my agency to sell. Otherwise, I'd have to return to my first job at age 16. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with busing tables at Denny's. It just wasn't the long-term career I wanted.

—Steve Cuno
 
 
Published this week in Inside Direct Mail

Insisting that our markets accept responsibility for their buying decisions in no way alleviates us marketers of responsibility for how we use our marketing knowledge. 

The knowledge itself is neutral. Knowing that a P.S. in a sales letter pulls high readership does not make it immoral to put compelling copy points there, nor does knowing the power of limited-time incentive offers make it underhanded to use them. It is in the content of marketing that abuses can and do occur. 

To be sure, much if not the majority of today's direct response marketing is forthright and honorable. But some of it resorts, if not to out-and-out lies, to the classic subterfuge of stating what is technically true in a manner that is designed to mislead. Don't believe me? Consider the number of products that makes fantastic claims in body copy — which the fly type directly contradicts.  (To continue reading, click here.)
 
 
Picture
Intuitive inklings may be good guides when buying a house or a car. But Steve Cuno thinks they can be disastrous when planning a campaign to launch a product or elect a politician.

Cuno, an author living in Sandy, has written Prove It Before You Promote It , which he says helps take the guesswork out of marketing.

The 230-page book, published last year by John Wiley & Sons, is "brilliant," said Alan Rosenspan, a former creative director at advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather.

"The book is engagingly written and includes key summary points in every chapter, which are a great guide for every advertiser," Rosenspan said in an e-mail. (Click here to read the Salt Lake Tribune article.)
 
 
I write a column for Swift, the newsletter of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Not a few of those readers recoil at the very mention of the word marketer. 

I have to admit, there are times I don't blame them. Every day, I see marketing practices that make me wince.

Not all. Marketing, like any discipline, can be used for good or bad, and for purposes landing in-between. Clearly at the end labeled "good" are campaigns urging people not to smoke. I'd also say that keeping the economy going—within reason—is a good thing. Honestly promoting product benefits so that consumers make informed choices is a good thing, too. Plus, evidence shows that international trade, which marketing fuels, is the best war-prevention program humanity has ever devised. 

We might argue over where on the continuum to place marketing that urges people to buy what they don't need, to choose the more costly brand, or to replace a car, cell phone or wardrobe when the old one still serves.

But some marketing activities land clearly at the polarity marked BAD. Shall I list a few? 

• Health products, claims and treatments that don't work. They hurt people by inflicting direct harm, or by lulling them from seeking real treatment for a serious condition. These include homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, wrist magnets, most so-called "alternative" medical preparations (you know, the ones that "Big Pharma" and "Big Medicine" supposedly "don't want you to know about"), faith healing, misinformation spread by the likes of Kevin Trudeau, Suzanne Sommers and Jenny McCarthy.

• Products that don't work and can hurt people financially. Examples include: nonsense from the likes of (once again) Kevin Trudeau (he gets around), stock market prediction books and software, carefully worded (so as to be legal, yet still deceptive) investment schemes, most multi-level marketing schemes.

• Products that are pure flimflam, like psychic hotlines and religious scams.

• Carefully worded claims defended by bogus studies. As I've written elsewhere, I can cook up a study showing that hiring the RESPONSE Agency lowers your risk of cancer.

• Clintonian lies, defined as "technically accurate but designed to mislead." Examples: A recent promotion for new cars for just $88 down and $88 per month. Yeah, right, as long as you don't read the small type. After three months, the payments rocket up to cover what you didn't pay during that time, and to cost you a good deal more than market rates. Or weight loss products which, in the small type, tell you that their claims are "not typical" and that they only work when you diet and exercise (which means the product is moot). Or, until recently, credit card issuers that took you unawares with default rates and other abuses. Or, so-called free samples given only after you surrender a credit card number, later to find you're getting and being billed for shipments after the free one.

• Out-and-out lying. Going out of business! The world's best! Never undersold! 

• Making things look better than they really are. Gray area here, I admit. But we all know what it’s like to make a purchase only to find that the product isn’t what was conveyed. Marketers who do that don’t do it by accident.

What have I left out? Readers, please click COMMENTS (above) and add your own. And, please reward honest marketers with your business, and withhold it from those who abuse your trust.
 
Marketers, there are plenty of worthy products and causes out there to focus our talents on. Let's not stoop. 

—Steve Cuno
 
 
Kudos to the billboard company that made—and fixed—a mistake on one of our campaigns.

Yesterday we hopped in the car for a look at the newly posted billboards we designed for our client. The first board we checked looked fine, except for one small detail. The billboard company had posted the top half of our design at the bottom and the bottom half at the top. Which meant, to anyone driving by, the board wouldn't make much sense.

We called our billboard rep. His response? Chagrin, an apology, and "I'll take care of it." No excuses. No "you gotta unnerstan my position.” 
 
Anyone can goof. It takes a professional to own and fix it. By admitting and taking care of the mistake, our rep earned our trust. We won't hesitate to work with him again.

How refreshing.

—Steve Cuno.
 
 
This letter from author Simon Singh appears in Swift, the newsletter of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Singh, one of my favorite science writers, is being sued for libel by a British chiropractic association for having referred to their trade as “bogus.” For the moment please set aside your feelings about so-called alternative medicine and instead consider the implications of the UK’s maniacal libel laws. No matter what country you live in, they have the power to affect you. Then, please click here (or on the link in the text) and sign the petition.—Steve Cuno

From Simon Singh

Dear Friends, Rationalists, Bloggers, 
Journalists, Medics, Skeptics & Scientists:

As you may know, I am currently being sued for libel. My own case is largely irrelevant, because the bigger issue is libel reform so that scientists can discuss ideas openly, fairly and robustly, without fear that they might end up in court. There are currently three ongoing cases involving libel and science/medicine.

This is a very English problem, but it has a chilling effect on debate around the world because English law can have a global jurisdiction. Hence, I am asking for support from around the world.

One way to help achieve libel reform is for 100,000 people to sign the petition for libel reform before the political parties write their manifestos for the upcoming General Election. We already have 29,000 signatures, but we really need 100,000, and we need your help to get there.

If you have not yet signed, then please click here.

To find out why we need to reform English libel law, then please read on. (Read the rest of this article by clicking here now.)

 
 
Readers of this blog know that I am a social media skeptic. I acknowledge that some social marketing successes have popped up. But they have not been replicated, which indicates that, so far, they are more likely the product of randomness than indicative of a hot new marketing tool. 

This week, Advertising Age reports results from the Edelman 2010 Trust Barometer, a study that asks people their level of trust in various media messages. Only 25% of people polled consider friends and peers as credible sources of consumer and business information.
 
Now, I'm also skeptical of research that asks people to self-report their feelings. Such “research” often tells you much about respondents’ self-concept, and little about anything else. However, when this same study was done two years ago, that number was 45%. The decline gives pause, self-reporting notwithstanding.
 
Perhaps marketing’s attempt to institutionalize word-of-mouth advertising has robbed it of its very power.

Steve Cuno
 
 
I had intended my recent Swift article to be an empowering piece on personal responsibility. I also wanted to bust a few myths about advertising’s alleged powers of control. Judging from many of the comments, it seems that some readers took the piece for a unilateral defense of marketing, abuses included, and a disavowal of marketers’ responsibilities for what and how they sell.

Nope. I am an outspoken critic of marketing abuses. If you’d care to search my blog, you’ll find that I routinely take marketers to task for flimflam products, racism, sexism, non-promises, certain business practices, needless vitriol, and sticking flyers on my door, to name a few. And, yes, I routinely bring up personal responsibility as well. Fair is fair.

Marketing abuses indeed occur and shouldn’t be tolerated. That should be an easy call in clear-cut cases, such as outright lying. But more often... (click here to read the rest)
 
 
My newest article for the James Randi Educational Foundation's Swift is now online:

Avoiding personal responsibility used to be clean and simple. Caught red-handed? The devil made you do it. End of story.

But today we have a dizzying array of bogus blaming options. We can choose from rap music, movies, TV, video games, the Internet, Twinkies, genes, society, the neighbor’s kid, our upbringing, the booze talking, atheism, evolution, the definition of “is,” planets, stars, lunar phases, the ever-vague and passive “mistakes were made,” the economy, being an only child, not being an only child, and more. Just keeping track can exhaust the most adept excuse-maker. Call me extreme, but some days I wonder if it might be easier simply to say, “I made a mistake.”

I saved the excuse that accuses my profession for last: “The advertising made me do it.” If you fed your kids fast food until your spouse mistook them for the minivan, blew the budget on a video game system, or bought trendy clothes you didn’t need and that went out of style as you were paying for them, take heart. You can blame us slick advertising people and our so-called hypnotic work.

 Just one problem... (To read the rest of this article, click here.)

 
 
When I rant about flimflam products, I'm often asked what harm results as long as the product makes someone happy, say by providing hope or a placebo effect. Call me a softy, but I think that hundreds of human beings being blown to bits qualifies as harm.

Despite scientific tests to the contrary, many people still believe in dousing — divining for water, oil, buried treasure, etc. Those who sell divining rods are either deluded (they truly believe their device works) or they are con artists. 

You decide which of those applies to Jim McCormick, of ATSC Ltd. McCormick recently sold the Iraqi government a supply of divining rods that he claimed could detect bombs — for $85,000,000. Since then, hundreds of people have been blown to smithereens as a direct result of believing his device "told" them they were safe. Deluded or con artist, McCormick is a mass murderer. 

I am pleased to say that McCormick was just arrested. I am not pleased to say that, while awaiting trial, he is free on bail.

You might call this an extreme case. Agreed. But if we didn't indulge more "innocent" dousing devices — say, divining for water — the extremes would have no precedent to rely on. And, for the record, I do not agree that divining for anything can properly be dismissed as "innocent." But that's another blog.

 Steve Cuno