November 15, 2009

Severe Serve Shill

My dear friends at Serve Marketing asked my two cents on their YouTube bit. I responded with moderation. (You should have seen the first draft!)

I posted on the YouTube comments section of there little bit too. There were a number of folks who on YouTube that had more favorable views. Serve made a comment in their own name. One fellow took me to task as a member of the chronically offended. Well what I find particularly offensive is that guy, one Gary Mueller, is in fact the founder of Serve Marketing and the registered admin contact for the URL the ad promotes but some how he forgot to mention that in his YouTube comments.

For some strange reason I can't comment there anymore.


So here is more about Gary, here he is on Fox News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhqPc0xfrXw

A simple whois turns up:
Registrant:
Serve Marketing
727 N Milwaukee St
milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202
United States

Domain Name: DIABETESISNOPICNIC.COM
Created on: 27-Oct-09
Expires on: 27-Oct-11
Last Updated on: 27-Oct-09

Administrative Contact:
Mueller, Gary

Ethical, Duplicitous? Doesn't really matter.

With the internet comes is a new form of literacy. A heightened level of know what you read and watch. It isn't always easy when some folks post under multiple names. Snake oil salesman can pretend to be about service.

As Carolyn points out in a YDMV comment, it appears there is some kind of a relationship between Serve and ADA. Ouch.

I hope not.

6 comments :

  1. Hi - Thanks for this post. I looked up servemarketing.org and saw that indeed, ADA has contracted with them for their services. My oh my, is this is what it has come to? I'm disappointed in ADA. Anything we can do to let them know we aren't feelin' the love from this ad???

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  2. FYI the comments section of the YouTube video have been disabled. Curioser and curioser...

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  3. Penny, sure there is something you can do...
    Especially if you're an ADA member, write them a letter, I certainly will.
    It will be interesting to see if these jokers get close to ad time on tv/radio: can't imagine a network that dares to touch this.

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  4. Penny

    I was thinking about this yesterday (not very hard as I was in New York to see the Letterman show). It struck me that our buddies at Sever may about as accurate about having ADA as a client as they are about diabetes. Which is to say - not accurate at all.

    I know it there is that bit on Serve's web page and it seems soooo... unlikely that they would mislead anyone. Wait! No it doesn’t.


    I am going to call ADA and ask them for their two cents.

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  5. Hi guys,

    Erik - I do plan on writing a letter or firing off an email, once I get a little more info. It seems so un-ADA like for them to hire this marketing company. They have no one in-house who knows diabetes and is in marketing? Seems shady for some reason.

    Bennet - Let me know what you find out if you can. Blog about it. I'm surprised more people in the diabetes community aren't all over this.
    Hope you enjoyed Letterman!

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  6. I did hear back from ADA. See the post at:

    http://www.ydmv.net/2009/11/adas-reply.html

    ReplyDelete