Of course, the whole purpose of charging P&P for the CDs is to get your credit card details so they can charge you for the membership you didn’t ralise you were getting (or afterwards forget you got and don’t remember to cancel).

They often argue it’s up there in black and white (or usually grey) on the order form.

But strangely enough, the things they do want you to see – the outlandish claims, etc. all appear in huge red or bold text. The stuff about the continuity is almost invisible in comparison.

Cheers,

Ian

On the 12th October 2010 Loida writes and apologises for the delay of the cheques arrival- all this time, the spam just keeps coming. On the 22nd October 2010 a summons QZ24187 was issued in Northampton County Court. Cardell media paid part of the claim only and now the company has the dubious distinction of having a CCJ to its credit.

Interestingly, Cardell talks of “How to be successful” but looking at the man and his organisation he:

1- Has ignored advertising standards to promote his bussiness
2- Cardell phone lines are always on answer phone and state they will call you back and never do
3- Emails are not answered
4- They don’t make refunds, only promises

so in conclusion, these are the ethics of the Cardell organisation then it’s pretty questionable what is being peddled because one thing’s for sure, it doesn’t fit with my moral understanding of good bussiness.

The campaign itself is difficult to get an image of at the moment. It’s the images that Cardell’s lawyers are hitting at, claimin that by showing the campaign you are violating his copyright.

So being a bit wimpy, I’d prefer not to put up an image myself.

That being said, If you were to google “chris cardell campaign hubpages” you’ll find the first result should give you what you’re looking for.

One interesting point for me is that the fake newspaper ad is what I’d call an example of content free advertising.

In the UK we have a publication called moneyweek – a weekly financial report. In their direct mail they send a 12 page lookalike of one of their reports which has about 8-10 pages of info (e.g. predictions for house prices, the gold market, etc.) and a few pages of ad to subscribe and get their free big report.

The key is that their “fake” report actually has a ton of valuable information in it. I was about to put one in the recycling recently, but rescued it as I wanted to keep it to read. That’s a great position to be in for direct mail. And it doesn’t pretend to be a real report either – once you read it it’s clear it’s an ad. It just copies the visual style of their weekly reorts.

The Cardell newspaper piece is the reverse. it does pretend to be a genuine newspaper report. There’s nothing in it to identify it as an ad. And worse, there’s no value in it at all. If you read it you don’t learn anything useful to help run your business or improve your marketing. All it does is tell you how great Chris Cardell is.

For me, if he’d included something useful in the article it would have been a different story. If his article had included useful tips or insights then it would have proven his expertise. As it is, he just claims it through the “testimonials”.

Ian

Can you possibly post the image of the said direct mail campaign?

That will be a great thing to dissect and discuss.

Thanks!

Personalisation is the using of the recipients name in this case. There are other, more advanced ways of personalising too.

But the furore is not about personalisation. It’s about using a post-it note that purports to come from someone called “J” who says Cardell is great. That’s not personalised – it’s the same J for everyone.

And it’s about faking up the tear sheet to look like it’s a news story about him from the Times/Telegraph when in reality it’s just an ad. That’s not personalised either.

Now we could argue all day whether it’s “clever” (i.e. it’s tongue-in-cheek and all the people who receive it realise it’s not real) or whether it’s deceptive (i.e. it’s designed to fool at least a few people into believeing the article is genuine reportage about how great Cardell is.

I personally belive it’s deceptive. So does the Advertising Standards Authority who’ve told him not to do it again (although timelines suggest he’s ignored them).

Ian

I suspect the reason no one points anything out in this case is that it’s irrelevant to the case in point. Whether he’s got a “get off your backside” style or not doesn’t excuse deceptive marketing, nor does it excuse trying to gag legitimate comment because somehow it “infringes on his copyright”.

Ian

PS I think you mean Tony Robbins. Tim Robbins is the actor from the Shawshank Redemption and other films

I’m interested that a US law firm (with little apparent knowledge of online reputation management) targeted a Polish based blogger on behalf of a UK “guru”. Jeux sans frontiers?

Ian

With me in some ways they actually had a case, as fair dealing isn’t the same as fair use.
You have a nice photo in your sidebar – If I used that picture in a fairly level review of everything I could find about you online, with some useful fair review/criticism, you possibly wouldn’t send me a cease & desist.
The best solution is to address the criticism, even to make it something to learn from as I have nothing against pushing the envelope a little (direct marketing pun)

However that didn’t stop me mentioning quite strongly how utterly stupid their methodology to gag bloggers seems to be.

p.s. are you running something to prevent proxy hijacking? You have nofollow on every link.

He doesn’t hide the ongoing charges (they appear in a line when you’re about to hit the guy button). But he doesn’t exactly make them very clear. The best practices they’re adopting in the US in the moment ask for very clear opt-in check boxes for continuity.

I had planned to do a post/video comparing his mailing with one I thought was much better from Moneyweek.

The Moneyweek one was an enclosure with “The Week” magazine which I subscribe to. It initially looks like a “supplement” magazine. In fact it looks exactly like a copy of Moneyweek from the front cover – it has the usual sort of cartoon picture and says “Read this or lose £43,000″ in magazine style as a headline. So it “fools” you a bit in that you could take it to be an extra magazine.

But when you read it for 2 minutes you can tell it’s not. It’s about 12 pages long – the first 8 of which are a pure content report on property investment and other things like that. The remaining 3 are an advert for its free giveaway investment report when you subscribe to the magazine with a few issues thrown in free. The final page is a subscription form with all the charges made very clear.

The big difference is that the Cardell piece does it’s level best to pretend to be an unbiased newpaper clipping. It tries to “prove” the investment in Cardell’s stuff will be good by giving testimonials in the piece, sales hype purporting to be journalism about how wonderful he is, and the fake recommendation from a friend.

The Moneyweek piece attempts to “prove” the investment in their magazine by giving a ton of valuable free info in the mini report. You can judge whether you’ll get value from the magazine by the value you get from the report. It doesn’t pretend to be a valuable report. It is one. So much so that when I came to do the recycling, I removed it from the pile just in case I wanted to re-read it at some point. That’s a coup for a piece of direct advertising – not only did I not bin it, I deliberately saved it to re-read later. And I’m not even an investor.

To me, that’s good direct mail. Creative, not deceptive. And adding value in the piece itself.

Ian