Promo - February 2008 - (Page 36)

LEad Generation Continued from page 35 brand protection service. “If you enter active Advertising Bureau have proyour e-mail [address] on the first page duced guidelines for best practices. and enter your personal data on the But the most aggressive companies in next, they’ve got you on their list. the field disseminate campaigns that They’re able to make money off you.” come dangerously close to deceptive ALL ABOUT IMPRESSION advertising, putting at risk the equity of the brands they piggyback on. Do brands such as Wal-Mart, Visa, and Jere Doyle is CEO of Prospectiv, a Victoria’s Secret have any legal obligadigital marketing company that does tion when they’re linked to such unaulead generation offers for big brands. His thorized offers? Not at all. Most of the company doesn’t use incentives, and its incentive lead companies are careful to premiums are more likely to be centsstate on their home pages that they have off coupons on Pampers, but he’s conno affiliation with the offered brands. ferred with other entrepreneurs whose On the other hand, that disclaimventures depend on er is displayed in very small This e-mail appears to dubious incentives. type at the bottom of the offer. be from Target, but the Meanwhile, the marquee names copy disavows any usually are noted prominently connection with the retailer way down below. near the top. If the offer comes via e-mail, those big brand names are sure to show up in the subject line to give the message a better chance of being opened. After all, it’s the drawing power of a Target or a Toys ‘R’ Us that gets the e-mail opened. One Promo staffer received an offer from SurveyRewardsCenter.com for a $1,000 Target card that purportedly mailed from “Target Center.” In fact, the message came from a domain entirely unrelated to the retailer. Although the e-mail disavowed any connection with Target, that only became apparent far down the offer in exceedingly small type. “I’ve asked them, ‘How many of “These brands spend millions of dolthese applications do you wind up fullars to create connections with consumfilling?’ ” Doyle says. “And the answer ers,” says Joe Broumand, co-founder and I got was one in 1,000. That’s a lot of president of Opt-Intelligence, a lead-genfrustrated people.” eration company that avoids incentives Not to mention irritation over more in favor of opt-in promotional offers. spam. Many incentivized lead genera“And then for free, and in most cases tors resell the personal data they acquire fraudulently, those brand names are to third parties. So registrants can find being used to lure people in to provide themselves both prize-less and buried personally identifiable information.” in a blizzard of unwanted e-mail. PROSECUTE, THEN SETTLE “In a way these companies don’t mind if you drop out of the registraLast year, federal and state regulators tion process without taking the offers seemed poised to come down hard on from their sponsors,” says Frederick lead-generation practices. The Federal Felman, CMO for MarkMonitor, a Trade Commission and the Florida Attorney General were known to be assembling cases against several companies for their lead-gen tactics. And in May 2007 ValueClick revealed that it was under an FTC investigation. The news drove publicly held ValueClick’s stock price down 40% between May and September. But that legal threat seems to be dissipating in a puff of settlements and small-scale fines. Last November Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced deals with AzoogleAds and another just last month with World Avenue. Without admitting wrongdoing, each company agreed to pay a $1 million fine to the state’s cyberfraud task force for misleading consumers with lead-gen offers of “free” merchandise and to amend their offers to read “free with purchase.” Meanwhile, ValueClick says it expects to reach a settlement with the FTC soon, and its financial rating has been upgraded. “Regulators are concentrating on the easiest legal issue, the question of whether these premiums really are free,” says Doyle. “But they’re not addressing two other important issues: the standards for collecting and sharing consumers’ personal data, and the fact that the system is basically designed to make people fall out.” The Online Lead Generation Association, an industry group founded by Opt-Intelligence CEO Dan Felton in 2005, is considering asking the brands involved in the promotions to get more aggressive about protecting their names. Such a task force would monitor incentivized lead-gen offers, note the URLs used and the brand names involved, and present that data to the trademark owners. “These companies have lots of legal resources, and this information would make it pretty simple to send ceaseand-desist letters or even to bring suit,” says Broumand. “I have to think Apple, Sony and Target would want to do that. These practices can’t be good for their brand equity.” l P 36 February 2008 / WWW.PROMOMAGAZINE.COM / Promo http://SurveyRewardsCenter.com http://www.promomagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Promo - February 2008

Promo - February 2008 Contents Editor's Note Reality TV Products Rebound - Soon? The Real World Young But Not Stupid Social Tease Health Quencher How Effective? Big Game in Big Easy Commentary Mailbox Marketing Q&A: Coke's Kruse Control Gift-Card Monte Room Service The Agency Center Resource Center Can't Beat Loyalty Index of Advertisers

Promo - February 2008

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