CPG Marketing Scams - Episode 31

Foreign.

Welcome to this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young, and my co host. What was your name again? Justice.

There he is.

All right, Justin, by any chance have you ever received an email from the widow of the Nigerian prince who wants to deposit $25 million into your checking account?

Yes. Yes, I have. And what a great prince.

Prince of a guy. Did you get your 25 million?

Somehow I didn't.

But did you give him all your banking information?

I kept all of that to myself.

That's why you didn't get the money.

Ah, dang it.

Just need to learn to trust better man. Well, believe it or not, there are scams that are almost equally as ridiculous that are being perpetrated on CPG advertisers. We're going to do just a little information today to warn people about them. There are several of these different scams going on and anytime there's a blip in the economy, it's like the scammers get even more enthusiastic.

Yeah.

So I want to give you folks some things to watch out for. So here's the first scam we're going to cover. The first one is, and all of our clients eventually get this call. You get a call from somebody who. I'm the producer of the new product innovation show, whatever it's called, and our show is seen on HGTV or Lifetime Network and we'd like to do a segment on your product. And the segment, we want to do a six minute segment on your product because we think your blank product is such a breakthrough innovation. So there's a part on new entrepreneurial people that haven't been around a lot. Oh, wow, that's really cool. They want to talk about the product. So step one, you will find out that there is a nominal fee for production to produce this segment. It'll be anywhere from 16 to $35,000. So here's the first tip, folks. Any legitimate TV show that wants to do a segment on your product will never charge you to do the segment. In fact, they will do the opposite. They will refuse to allow you to pay them to do a segment because it's called payola. So you can't go to Dr. Oz and say, hey Doc, let me pay you to talk about my item here.

Right?

The second thing is they will tell you, well, our show airs on whatever lifetime, HGTV. What it really does is it airs at 3 o' clock in the morning in Ottumwa, Iowa, where they've bought it onto a cable system, a single cable system for $8.

Right.

And that's your airing. But of course, you can take this show and put it on your website and you can show people it's a scam. Now there's a variation of this scam. The next variation on this scam is you get the phone call and we're producing a show and it's hosted by X. So they give you the name of a recognizable D list name. And it's like Fran Tarkenton. Fran Tarkenton has one of these going on. Fran Tarkenton has tried your new product, your lip balm. And this is his favorite lip balm. And he would like to do a segment on his show about it. Ooh, Fred Tarkenton likes my lip balm. And of course you go home and you tell your kids, fran Tarkenton likes the lip balm. And the kids go, what's a Fran Tarkenton? Because they have no idea who Fran Tarkinten is.

No.

So that's the second version of this scam. So again, you're going to be charged for that kind of deal. Now that's not the only scam though. There's more scams. There is the I represent this certain celebrity and the certain celebrity loves your product. And what that is leading to is getting you to just pay an endorsement free, an endorsement fee to again, to a D list celebrity who is looking to pull money out of you to be able to augment their now non existent career. All right, so the second scam we're going to talk about, Justin, is the Dr. Scan. And there's a lot of these happening. So what happens in the Dr. Scan is. And you see this happening. So let me tell you the kind of client that gets this, the kind of client that gets this is the client that has a product that doesn't have a lot of distribution yet. Yeah. So I'm selling on Amazon, I'm selling online. And these people will call you up and they will say, well, we're in the direct response business. We're in the direct to consumer business. And we've been looking at your product and we think your product's a home run. We think everybody in America is going to buy this thing. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to shoot 122nd TV commercial and we're going to buy all this media and they show you. We're going to buy commercials all over the country. Now keep in mind what they're buying is they're buying 60 and 120 second spots on a single cable system in a single city at an off time. So they're buying like an $8 TV, $8 TV commercial. So we're going to run, you know, we're going to run Discovery, we're going to run Home Improvement, we're going to run hgtv, we're going to run Lifetime. Now, because we know how wonderful this campaign is going to be. We're going to buy. We're going to start off by buying 100 pieces of your product or 500 pieces of your product. We're going to place an order with you for products because this is going to be so good. We're going to handle all the order fulfillment. So we'll do all the shipping. We'll handle the phone calls, we'll handle the web service. We'll do the fulfillment. This is going to be big. Now all you need to pay for is to produce this 122nd commercial and pay for the media buy. So 15 to 40,000 for the commercial, and then they'll usually give you a 20 to $35,000 media buy. Now, I will tell you that when I've analyzed these $35,000 media buys, they have about $1,500 worth of media in them, I'm sure. I mean, literally, this spot's worth $15. This one's worth $8. This one's worth $20. Get about 1500 bucks worth of media for $35,000. Now, what miraculously always happens is after your spot is produced, after your spot goes on the air, America didn't want it.

What?

We were wrong. We thought it was going to be just a hit song with a bullet, but it didn't work.

That doesn't make sense.

So we're sorry. We got, you know, so here's what happens. Your product sells for 20 bucks. They buy a hundred pieces, they charge you $35,000 for $1,500 with a media, they charge you 15 to $40,000 to produce a useless commercial. And that's their profit model. That's how they make money. They do not make money off of selling products. They make money off of shooting bad commercials and selling fake media plans. So one of the things that we always tell people do, first off, if you have an ad agency, if you were a client here, just tell the scammer, oh, I have an ad agency. Let me give you my AES number, and we'll call over there because they will never call you, because as soon as you get the call, you're gonna bust out laughing and say, seriously, you really gotta sell this. So they won't go to an agency. Cause an agency already knows that it's nonsense. The second thing you can do is ask them. Let me talk to the last three successful products that you've sold. Just three. Just give me the last three hit products. In fact, let's start by giving me the name of the last three hit products. The answer? There's always two answers because I've done this. So it's always one of the two answers. The first answer is, I'm new here and I don't know who that is. I'd have to go get that.

Right, right.

So of course my response is always, I'll wait.

I've got time. Come on.

Yeah, it's okay. Put me on hold. I'll be right here. I'll answer some emails while you go get that. The second response is, that's confidential information. So think about this. We put products on television, we advertise nationally, we tell everyone in America about your product and it's a secret.

Somehow.

That's right. We can't tell anybody who this is. The last thing I will tell you is these scams tend to. Not always, but they tend to emanate from Florida.

Is there a reason for that?

There is a reason for them to emanate from Florida. There's a couple reasons. I'll give you three reason number one, a lot of them popped up around Home Shopping Network.

Okay.

Which is in Clearwater.

Yep.

Two, many of them are ex employees of the granddaddy of all scam ad agencies, which is something called Amazing Discoveries. So they're all people who work there and now they spun off to start their own operation. But the third one is a legal reason. And the legal reason is that the bankruptcy laws in Florida are completely different than they are in most of the country. So in Florida, if you get sued in Florida and you're forced into bankruptcy, normally what happens? So let's say we were in any other state and we filed bankruptcy. Well, that state will allow you to keep. You have to get rid of all your assets to pay the creditors. And you can keep a car with certain amount of equity, personal property with certain amount of value, and you can keep a limited amount of equity in your home.

Okay.

It's very limited, right?

Sure.

In Florida, when you file bankruptcy, you can maintain your homestead with unlimited equity. So the reason people go to Florida to do this is because if I get sued and I lose, they can't get my stuff. I put all my Money into a house. I'll go buy a $3 million house and pay cash and file bankruptcy and I get rid of you and get rid of the debts and I can sell the house and get my $3 million back. There was actually a guy here in Detroit in the ad business. I won't use his name, but he was actually forced into bankruptcy and immediately changed his address to Florida and bought like a $7 million mansion and paid cash for it. And then waited the 90 days because you have to have a 90 day period. And waited the 90 days for the bankruptcy, Filed the bankruptcy. Okay, I liquidated. All I've got is this house. It's worth like $8 million. But this is all I've got. All I got is this 8 million dollar house paid off. So I can't pay any of you people. So that's why they tend to generate out of Florida. You didn't know Florida was so exciting, did you? Wow.

No, no. I mean, Florida, actually.

Not that this really helps in this conversation, but Florida actually is the Wild west and its laws are very much like that. Because Florida was actually when Florida first got founded, it was really the place where the wealthy elite East Coasters, the New Yorkers, Boston, New Jersey, where they would go to misbehave and they would do all kinds of misbehavior and debauchery in Florida and crooked land deals, all kinds of crazy stuff. And Florida's kind of maintained that old world charm.

Old world charm. So any of our listeners who are trying to become top con artists, ensure that you move to Florida. That's the message of the show, folks. Move to Florida.

Now, I do happen to have a home in Florida. I don't want that to alarm anybody, but our main address is still in Michigan. It's just a winter place. Don't be alarmed.

But at any rate, folks, not for that reason.

I just want to tell people, when you get a phone call from somebody offering to do some amazing ad campaign and it's too good to be true.

It'S because it is.

It's because it's too good to be true.

Right.

The reality is there is no shortcut. No, you, you just have to do the fundamentals and you have to do them every day over and over and over to get consistent results.

Yes.

It's just, it's not a trick.

There is no silver bullet in this business. There's no trick. It is consistent, grinding, just like it was to get to your business to where it is. It's the same thing with your Marketing and advertising, you got to keep, keep in the grindstone, keep working, keep building. And you're constantly having to build because there's always going to be new consumers that you have to win over and a new message is going to have to be crafted, so on and so forth.

Yeah, it's, you know, you talk to any great football coach and they're always going to tell you what made their teams great was doing the basics over and over.

Yeah. And that's it.

Always doing the fundamentals, building a strong foundation, building your brand, making great products, providing great customer service, doing the right thing. That's what keeps it going, plain and simple. If any of you listening get any phone calls from any of these particular type of ad people and you think it sounds suspect, I'm going to invite you to call us. Yes, call our office of Jekyll and Hyde, 800-504-4210. You can go to the website Jekyll Hyde Agency or jekyllhydelabs.com, either one of those URLs and you can tell it's we're not gonna cost you, you're not gonna charge anything. Call and tell us what you've been offered and we will very quickly be able to tell you that's a scam or actually that sounds legit.

Right.

Look into it further. Yeah, we will do that. So that's it. Any other comments for you?

That's it now. I'm good.

And hopefully the Nigerian princess money will show up in your account sooner than later.

I would love to retire to Florida.

It's amazing how many people have fallen through that.

Oh, I know, I know.

It's just there's a lot of people that are willing to do bad things to give money.

Unfortunately, yes.

We don't want any of our listeners to be a victim of them. That's it till the next time on CPG Insiders. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result. Just go to jekyllhideagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800-500-4210 SA.