SLAMBOARD

Here is a concise explanation of what the FTC does, taken from Wikipedia:

The FTC carries out its mission by investigating issues raised by reports from consumers and businesses, pre-merger notification filings, congressional inquiries, or reports in the media. These issues include, for instance, false advertising and other forms of fraud. FTC investigations may pertain to a single company or an entire industry. If the results of the investigation reveal unlawful conduct, the FTC may seek voluntary compliance by the offending business through a consent order, file an administrative complaint, or initiate federal litigation.

Reports from consumers is first in the list of things to which this great big independent government body responds. In the absence of consumer complaints, a misleading online sales pitch can thrive indefinitely. Here is a video tutorial on how to file a complaint with the FTC:

Interestingly, this video recently celebrated its second anniversary an Kimkins is still not in compliance with the current FTC regulations. The FTC has a page of good advice for people shopping for weight loss products and services. Nobody who reads that page carefully will pay for a Kimkins membership but at this point it’s not the careful consumers that we are worried about. If Heidi Diaz had been around in the 1800s, we’d probably be debating whether she had coined the phrase about suckers and their reproductive rates. Kimkins doesn’t comply with the FTC because it simply wouldn’t work. The FTC disapproves of fantastic claims of weight loss and asks instead for typical or average results. Please leave some comments with wording suggestions for the typical results of Kimkins. My suggestion is as follows:

I lost $39.99 in just 3 months!!!

I just saw this on the Daily Mail website…

Almost everything about Jackie Cox mirrors the Kimkins Controversy.

• 500 calorie diet -check.
• Weightloss guru who is discovered to be obese -check.
• Dieters reporting hair loss and other health side effects -check.

There is one very important difference. As far as I know, Jackie Cox has never posted fake pictures of herself or fabricated facts about her own successful long term weight loss. The other difference may be a direct result of that difference. Her diet empire, LighterLife, continues to thrive and Jackie lives the good life in the Bahamas (a popular tax haven with the Brits).

This is an interesting coincidence…

Yesterday I posted a movie and some commentary on the ethics of manipulating photos. Now there is a viral video from diet.com talking about the same thing, but with a diet and body image slant.

I haven’t actually listened to the whole thing, as I am supposed to be working. Some of the tricks remind me of some things that I saw on the ‘Watch Us Lose’ table on the front page of Kimkins over the last year or so. Of course some of Heidi’s pictures needed nothing more complicated than a slight vertical stretch to help recreate past weight loss success.

Consumer Affairs journalist David Wood wrote an very good article about Kimkins and it hit the net early today. He was pretty critical of Woman’s World, so much so that I want to go back and see if they really wrote some of the stuff that he is quoting. A lot of the hype sounds almost insane in retrospect.

The only new news for people who have been following along are some frank quotes from lawyer John Tiedt.

I am glad to see the story retold on a website with the reach and traffic of a site like ConsumerAffairs.com.

The seven figure sales at Kimkins.com were due in no small part to the favorable coverage in Woman’s World Magazine. This publication has huge circulation, and the print versions will often sit in waiting rooms and salons enjoying months or years of repeated perusal. People seeking to expose the Kimkins fraud did not get very far in trying to convince Woman’s World to make any kind of reversal or apology. We personally received no answers to our questions last year and instead got a cease and desist order. In response to the letter, I made changes to the cover image that I was using to make it arguably transformative. There was no follow up from the magazine. I didn’t send any further correspondence to them. Many, many interested people did.

After a long wait, the magazine has finally apologized in detail, on their website. A print apology is also forthcoming. I thank them for it.