What's Good For The Goose

Many of you know that I love a great deal.  I read a few mommy blogs that highlight great deals they've heard about online or in stores.  About February of last year, I heard of a new company called Franklin Goose.  They presented themselves as a small internet company who was into natural and organic baby products (cloth diapers, organic clothing, BPA free bottles,etc).  They purchase many of their items from environmentally conscious work-at-home-moms.  They were offering $ 5 store credit for every review you wrote about any of their products you've tried (you didnt' have to purchase the product from them).  Sounds crazy, right?  Many people asked on their Facebook page if this was a legit deal.   Absolutely.  There were no specifications as to how many reviews each person could write or how long they had to be.  They set a deadline of when all the reviews had to be completed.  They also said that instead of using their advertising budget on a "typical advertising campaign", they were doing this instead because they wanted to hear from real moms and dads.   Well, people started submitting reviews and getting store credit. 

Then the deal went viral.  Thousands of people were submitting reviews.  Some were completely bogus like "Hey, I'd like to try one of those."  But others were well written, truly helpful reviews.  I looked at their products and realized we had 13 of them (mostly books and some of their plates, spoons, cups, baby carrier, potty chairs, and I can't remember what else).  So I received my $65 credit. I only told one other friend about it because I still wasn't sure it was legit.  Other people had hundreds of dollars in store credit. 

I didn't use my credit immediately since I wasn't sure what I wanted to buy.  I thought I would wait until closer to Christmas or the kids' birthdays.  Then we got an email from the company saying that they were overwhelmed with orders so if we would "bank" our store credit for 6 months, then we could use it plus an additional 20% in interest.  Many people, including me, did this thinking that we were helping out a small company.  They had guaranteed that the credits would be good for up to two years. 

Right before Christmas they froze everyone's credits so no one could use them at Christmas.  Still promising to allow the credits plus 20% after they "caught up" with all their orders.   Well, last week everyone received this email:

To all of our loyal customers,


We are writing to update you on the status of the promotion. As you may know, we were overwhelmed by an enormous number of reviews submitted in connection with the promotion, and we thank all of you who followed the rules and wrote honest, heartfelt reviews.

Unfortunately, many of those who submitted reviews merely sought the promotion’s benefits without providing a commensurate genuine, honest review. While we initially filled a large amount of orders, we simply do not have the resources to continue vetting the reviews to distinguish those that followed the rules from those that did not.

In order to continue as a business, we must amend the promotion. This is not a step we take lightly, but one which is necessary for the health of our business. Accordingly, we have decided to take down and remove from the site all reviews which were written as part of the promotion. All open orders using store credit and partial store credit will be cancelled, as well as all remaining store credit. In their place, we are providing a one-time use coupon for 40% off of any purchase.
 
Whoa!  A single use 40% off coupon is not exactly the same as $ 65 of merchandise. 
 
Now I know some will say, "Rachel, don't be greedy. It was free.  The stuff wasn't yours to begin with." 
 
Initially, I agreed.  I thought, "Oh well....nothing lost, nothing gained." I was frustrated that they cancelled credits when so many people tried to help them out.  I blamed it on the fact that maybe this little company didn't understand the power of mommy blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  That they didn't realize something like this would go viral.  If they knew they were in over their heads, why not cancel the promo immediately when the reviews started pouring in?  If they knew they couldn't make good, why string everyone along for a whole year and then offer a measly coupon? 
 
But then I started doing some research.  And now I'm ticked.  First, this isn't a little mom and pop company that didn't know their little ad campaign would go viral.  They are owned by a much larger company called JSA Technologies.  Franklin Goose sent out requests offering a $25000 prize for someone who could come up with a marketing campaign that would "go viral"  in order to drive traffic to their new website.  Obviously, this was the winning campaign (although now I am starting to wonder if the winner ever got his/her prize money from them). 
 
(Stay with me) Have you ever wondered when you type search terms into Google why certain websites are listed first in the search results and others are listed on maybe page 2 or 3 or 200 of the search results?  There's something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google doesn't like to kiss and tell how it works, but there are certain factors that influence who gets to be first on the list (JCPenney recently got in trouble for doing some things to get on the top of the list that they weren't supposed to do). 
 
Some of the factors include:

• Frequency of website updates and content change (thousands of reviews being submitted every second made it look like their website and content was constantly updating and changing)
• The length of time a user spends on the site (many people spent hours on the site writing reviews, then going back to the site to check their accounts)
• Incoming links (bloggers, Facebook, Twitter all posted links to FG's site announcing the deal)
• There's also something called "social proof" that's not related to Google, but relevant to this.  Products with lots of reviews (think amazon reviews) make other people feel safe buying the product.  (FG's lesser known products had lots of reviews now driving up sales.)

Magically, Franklin Goose rose to the top of Google's search lists.  That's exactly what the company wanted and needed for a year to drive people to their site.  Once that goal was realized, the credits magically went away.  They also removed all the reviews so no one can prove what they wrote. 

Now Franklin Goose is saying that its loyal customers and those who wrote real reviews are "greedy scammers".   I don't think Franklin Goose realizes the power of mommy bloggers.  These moms are calling the Better Business Bureau, contacting the Virginia Attorney General's office, boycotting the site, contacting vendors to let them know about FG's shoddy business practices and looking into a class action lawsuit.  Yikes! 

Live and Learn.  As someone once said, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" or in this case, free natural and organic baby products either.