Internet Marketing ABC

The Big Lebowski of Internet Marketing – Frank Kern – just published a blog post regarding the new FTC regulations.

And there are SERIOUS regulations. The FTC wants to get rid of online scammers, and they have heavy artillery set up to get the job done. Personally, I think it’s GOOD that the FTC is doing something against the scammers.

BUT: it can be really scary. Because the FTC isn’t exactly helpful when it comes to explaining what exactly you have to do to comply with their regulations.

Lucky for you and me, there are guys like Frankius Kernikus, who help to make sense out of it all. And while nothing can replace the advice of a lawyer who knows his stuff, Frankius Kernikus does a great job translating his understanding of the whole issue into Kernese.

So I suggest you check out what Frank Kern has to say on the new FTC regulations.

I recently read a blog comment from a guy who says stuff like: oh, I don’t like Frank Kern because he’s so manipulative…

actually, let me quote him here, to put it right:

Just going to the page for 2 minutes I can tell you I don’t like him. First there’s the having to sign up to a newsletter to get past the pop-up video. If there was a close button, I couldn’t find it.

Then once I got past the obviously techie video, I reached a super low tech web page that was about one of the ugliest I’ve ever seen. I’m tipped off right there that this is totally deliberate.

And that tells me I’m getting played. I don’t like getting played. I therefore don’t like Frank Kern and no matter how much his products/services might actually help me I’ll never ever trust him.

I’m like that with everything – I carefully examine the message that the medium is giving me and not just the words. If the medium’s message and the words don’t match, then I’m out of there.

Unfortunately not enough people do that and they end up making far too many people who know how to manipulate others very very rich.

What gets me to me? The Pen Men got me to buy. They were honestly helpful and never once did I feel that the medium of the messages jarred with their words. And I know if it did, I could talk to them about it and we’d have a good conversation about it.

Now I know with hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of clients these personal conversations aren’t possible, but there are ways to sell things without manipulating the media to get you to buy. Take McDs for example. When they have a new burger, they don’t say “now I’m not going to sell you this burger, I’m just going to talk around it until I wear you down.” Nor do they say “we’re not like the rest. We’re the real deal. We too stick it to the man. We’re just like you” Nope they show us the burger, show people enjoying eating it and then tell us the price for it. And if it interests me I try it out. If I like it, I buy it again.

Here’s the answer that I gave him in my head, but then I decided: wait a minute, there’s a great lesson in her:

lol – you blame Kern for being manipulative, but you think McDs ads are OKAY???
Please, get a basic education on persuasion and manipulation.
You can’t get much more manipulative than those people (except when you’re the government and control the media maybe).

Yeah, they show you “the burger”… (ever compared on of those pictures with one of those they actually serve you?)

Yeah, they show you “the people enjoying eating it”… ever cared to compare the people who eat McD in the ads with the people who really eat at McD? (hint: they’re probably using some lens that turns XXL people into M-size people… AND put a smile on their face… and have built-in photoshop capabilities that make them look healthy).

And yeah, they tell you the price to lure you in… but once you’re there, you’ll most likely end up spending more money because they have perfected the art of upselling like no other company. (Even Kern or Filsaime can’t upsell that well…).

McD makes their stuff look healthy on TV, which is as big a lie as it can get, at least in my personal opinion. The farmers who deliver the potatoes for McDs won’t even go NEAR the potato fields with anything but space-astronaut-like protective gear, because those fields are so messed up with chemicals. Let alone eat those potatoes. But I remember a couple of spots where they did a whole “see how we grow our stuff” thingie, and there were people walking happily through green fields. (My random guess is that they created these fields just so they can show people around there).

Just because it doesn’t come accross as manipulative, it doesn’t mean that  it’s not manipulative.

See, the difference between McD and Kern is: Kern is really good at manipulating, but he’s still doing it in a pretty obvious way. After all, he’s “just” a multi-million dollar company.

McD is really good at manipulating… so good that it looks like they’re not doing it. That’s the real art of it. It’s like olympic athletes who seem to perform the most amazing moves effortlessly (but you know there’s thousands of hours of intense training behind that effortless move).

So the lesson here is: specially when something does NOT seem manipulative, you wanna watch closely. Because what those ads are doing is they are conditioning you to associate happiness with McD. (all the smiling happy people eating under the big M). They’re NOT just giving you the information: this is the burger, this is how much it costs, if you like it, get it. If that would be all, they could save tens of millions of dollars in advertising expenses.

Rather, they put these little “harmless” spots together where whole teams of manipulation experts work on so that they don’t look manipulative. After all, would you want to eat food from a company that tries to manipulate you? Probably not.

Ok folks, this was a bit of a rant today, but here’s the lesson:

So, if you really want to master manipulation, study spots by “the big ones”. Kern? Peanuts. His whole business is making just a couple of millions. There are companies who are spending much more money than that on advertising alone – think P&G, Danone, Nestle, McD, etc. Watch how they do it and learn.