How our fake business won a Customer Service award
Former agency executive Marc Cowper, now boss of start-up Recomazing, embarked on an experiment to see how easy it is to buy endorsements from influencers for a fake business. To his dismay, he won an award, which he argues highlights the potential for manipulation and dishonesty by social media influencers...
Back in my agency days I always had one constant frustration. Every day I saw talented agency & client teams working hard to deliver ‘on-brief’ marketing plans but ultimately have zero control over whether the company actually backed it up via good customer experience.
Unfortunately, the ‘gap’ that exists between advertising (what a company says it will do) and CX (what a company actually does) has been one of the most harmful things to our industry. Whether companies have knowingly deceived customers or whether the decision has been made to invest more in marketing instead of improving CX, this ‘gap’ has a LOT to answer for!
The CX gap is the reason for such high levels of consumer distrust in advertising and it has ultimately led to us corroding the effectiveness of the very channels we rely on to communicate with our target markets. Think this sounds a tad dramatic? Well, just ask Google what people think of our industry and see what comes up as the first results…
So, if the-all-knowing-Google says it, does it make it true…is all marketing bullshit? Of course not! For the most part, marketing is incredibly powerful and can often be the sole difference between the success or failure of a business. But, marketing also has many objectives – from awareness to sales and everything in between. And when it comes to the objective of converting sales (and isn’t that why we’re all in this game?) there is a significant difference in each.
The research tells us that the more trust a customer has in the channel, the more powerful it becomes at converting a sale. It’s the reason why the modern marketer places such heavy importance on gaining Social Proof through building social followings, putting customer testimonials in our ads, recruiting influencers to advocate our brands and driving positive word of mouth. Or, for a more quantitative measure – it’s the reason why ads on Facebook featuring your friend’s get better click through than those that don’t.
When it comes to sales conversion we know that our customers’ actions and opinions hold far more weight than that of our own. Or to steal someone else’s words…
How the Social Proof game is changing…
But, before you start thinking that you can solve all your customers’ deep-seeded trust issues by driving social followings, public reviews or influencer posts – think again! Unfortunately, those trust issues are going to get a LOT worse.
The problem is, just like any other marketing channel, Social Proof only works when it belongs to the customer and operates for the customer. Its effectiveness on converting sales, much like all other channels, is inherently linked to how much people feel it represents the objective truth.
Or in other words, as soon as businesses start sneaking into the ‘Social Proof Party’ to push their own agendas it’s no longer a party that anyone wants to attend.
At Recomazing we play right in the Social Proof space with a focus on friend recommendations and have been pretty appalled at the volume of articles regarding businesses buying reviews. As inquisitive marketers we wanted to see for ourselves just how widespread the problem has become, so we set up a fake business to see how easy it was to buy our own way into the Social Proof party. The results were quite shocking…and not in a click-bait ‘what Kim K said to Kanye will shock you to your core’ kind of way…this was genuinely shocking.
In only a few hours and a grand total of $154 we built a substantial social following, amassed a raft of five-star reviews, had ‘influencers’ posting out photos of our business content, became the highest unpaid listing on some of Australia’s most popular review sites and our fake business even won a Customer Service award! Yes, you read that right, a customer service award without having a single customer (something the staff here are very proud of!).
Here’s how it all went down (WARNING: Please do not try this at home – this is merely a social experiment to understand how evolved the black market has become to buy social proof for a fake business. If you own/manage a business undertaking this activity will ultimately have a negative impact).
Our Social Experiment…a step by step play!
1. First, we set up a fake business by designing a logo and creating a company blog. This cost us nothing and 30 minutes of our time using Canva (Canva if you’re reading this – we love you!)
Logo:
Company blog: A quick setup on Word Press.
- We then went searching for ways to pay for a social following. With over 37 million results, there were a few options to choose from.
- So we bought a 24,000 strong Twitter following. This took us 30 minutes and cost $30 (But big deal right, everyone knows people have been stupidly buying social followings for years…yeah, fair enough…let’s dig a little deeper then).
- We then paid “influencers” with a hefty Twitter (15K+) following to promote our business. They were even happy to Tweet using images with our logo Photoshopped on it!Total cost was $25 and three hours time.
(Could it be that these ‘influencers’ are most likely people who have just bought their own followers to trick businesses into paying them?!
Most definitely…so let’s go a little deeper down the rabbit hole)
- Ok, so then we registered our business on two leading Australian review sites and went searching for people to write fake reviews for our non-existent business. We were hopeful that this would be a little more difficult, but it wasn’t.We found thousands of profiles offering to write false 5-star reviews for any type of review site. We could sleep easy knowing we were going to receive great service from these people because it just so happened that all of them had received their own high review scores (how wonderfully reassuring!)And….
So we paid a variety of reviewers to write positive 5-star reviews about our non-existent company like the one below…
It wasn’t long before our fake business was ranked as the number one unpaid listing in its category. In total, this cost us $99 and two hours of our time.
To be fair, review sites are trying to combat this issue based on automated algorithms profiling the user. Trip Advisor, as an example, have teams of people dedicated to trying to minimise this issue. However, when a court case for over $700,000 was recently filed against them for not doing enough to stop false reviews, the global giant successfully defended the case by essentially saying false reviews were a phenomenon that even they couldn’t stop.
“TripAdvisor never asserted that all the opinions were real, even mentioning that verification was impossible…” said the administrative court ruling.
6. Lastly, the icing on the non-existent cake was when our fake business won a ‘Customer Service Award’ from one of the review sites (well-done team, those late nights paid off!). The awards are determined by an algorithm which is suppose to identify fraudulent reviews.
Scary stuff!
So what does this mean for marketers?
If you are reading this then you’re most likely smart enough to know that buying Social Proof or basing your influencer strategy solely on reach instead of an authentic relationship is a horribly stupid idea – but it obviously hasn’t stopped people doing it. The point of this experiment is that this deceptive conduct is not only being done, it is being done at such a mass level that it’s creating its own little economy. This all ladders back up to generating further consumer trust issues in these Social Proof channels that we rely on.
To put the impact in perspective, after wrapping up his investigation into false reviews and bringing charges against participating companies, the New York Attorney General, stated: “What we’ve found is even worse than old-fashioned false advertising. When you look at a billboard, you can tell it’s a paid advertisement — but on Yelp or Citysearch, you assume you’re reading authentic consumer opinions, making this practice even more deceiving.”
As is so often the case, the bad decisions by a few are ruining it for the rest of us as our target audiences become increasingly aware that businesses are out there buying likes, reviews, fans, comments and that their beloved Instagram heroes are transforming into skin covered billboards.
It’s a deceptive undertaking that is happening on a daily basis at scale so don’t expect Google to change its opinion of the Marketing and Advertising industry anytime soon.
So, does this mean you shouldn’t be aiming to create Social Proof in your own marketing? Not really, the research shows us that it’s still far more effective than traditional advertising when it comes to converting a sale.
But does it mean you should be more considerate of how you roll out your Social Proof or Advocacy strategy…absolutely! It’s why our clients compliment their existing Social Proof strategy by tapping into the only marketing channel that comes with its own inbuilt trusted relationship that can’t be bought – recommendations between friends.
In fact, it’s the reason why the majority of Recomazing Employees, Board of Directors and Investment team are actually current or ex-advertising execs who wanted to create a platform that took away the reliance on advertising and instead rewarded great CX with advocacy.
One thing is for sure – Customer Advocacy is currently having its time in the spotlight. Over the last two years I’ve had over 100 meetings with some of the industry’s most influential CMOs / CXOs / CEOs / marketing agencies / management consultants / data experts / innovation bodies to talk about how they are dealing with this change to maximise their own ROI.
Marc Cowper is the CEO of recommendation startup Recomazing. This article was first published on Recomazing’s blog and is republished with permission. Recomazing will be presenting a session at next Month’s Mumbrella360, offering advice for brands on how to hook up with tech start-ups.
Loved it. Great story.
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Great article! A++!!!!!!
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On point again Cowper
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What a guy
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Really Mumbrella? A whole article about preventing fake reviews from a company that has a very clear (albeit unmentioned here!) commercial interest in moving people off the platforms they covered here to their very own. I don’t think all marketing is bullshit, but this sure seems to be.
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Great article! A+++
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Excellent article. I wonder how many Insta celebs actually have a high proportion of false followers.
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Fantastic article Mark! I work with clients who despair daily about reviews, social listings, influencers, followers and engagement and it’s so refreshing to read this! Will def be sharing with them. Thank you!
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As a old-timer I prefer business and sales strategy first, then marketing.
As a consumer I ignore all businesses on FB, Twitter and any ‘social’ media. New social technology businesses should stop being lazy and come up with a better revenue model than simply chucking advertising on everything.
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Thanks Antony – appreciate the feedback
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Thanks for the high marks 😉
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Great contribution Marc! Of course you have a commercial interest but unlike most who simply rave on about what marketers should do you have actually done a useful experiment we can all learn from. I think this is an excellent contribution! I hope you keep exploring! Peter
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Too funny… …and quite disturbing.
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Sounds like a common problem these days Chloe. Thanks for the feedback.
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Hi Peter – happy to hear you appreciated the fresh approach, that’s what we were aiming for. We’ll certainly keep digging away – thanks for the positive vibes.
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(Hmmm…Mumbrella, the reply function seems to be wonky…I’ll try replying this way)
@KP – well, the last time Insta did a cull of fake/non-active accounts there was mass complaints from Insta-celebs with some losing millions of followers…should give an indication 😉
@Stuart – glad it had an impact
@Maddy – wow an “A+++” – people are going to start thinking I paid for your review 😉
@Gerry Attric Your sentiments seem to be shared with many who are now blocking our ads. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future as new tech can’t rely so heavily on ad revenue.
@Tim – thanks for the feedback…trying to think which Tim you are!?
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This is the horrifying truth in an industry that too often cares more about numbers and less about the quality of the followers. Money causes some people to act with zero integrity. They’re called cowboys.
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Great article, seems our intuitive concerns are founded. Thanks.
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Scary, brilliant and entertaining!
It’s a very similar story to a guy (I forget who) that built a massive, fake Twitter following and Facebook community. He ended up getting quite a few bookings because of it.
What I want to know is if you got any potential customers during your experiment?
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Marc Cowper is the kind of guy that can turn up ten minutes late every day on a skateboard and have his boss riding a skateboard by the end of the day. Go Marc!
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Authentic relationship is the key here – great article
Toni C
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Deep-seated
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Hi Marc, nice work – even though it is a bit of PR piece disguised as a funny case study. Well seems to work 😉
However you repeatedly say “research says” without providing a hyperlink to the study or the name of the study. This undermines a) your credibility and b) does not pay respect to the people who conducted the studies you are referring to. Please change this in the future (@Mumbrella: please remind authors to do so, in the name of content creators).
In particular, I would love to know more about “the research shows us that it’s still far more effective than traditional advertising when it comes to converting a sale.” Assuming you refer to social media, I challenge you on this one!
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NN, sorry for my absurdly late reply – a friend just sent your comment to me (shame on me for not replying earlier).
The research I refer to is the Nielson Global Trust in Advertising report which has always shown that people trust and act on recommendations from friends more than any other medium http://www.nielsen.com/au/en/i.....-2015.html
You are right though, I should have referenced it…
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