There is a saying commonly attributed to P.T. Barnum: “All Publicity is Good Publicity.” While we might be used to hearing this statement from down-and-out celebrities, Vitaly Borker is trying to apply this same marketing strategy to his online business. The US-based owner of DecorMyEyes.com is in the spotlight for his unfriendly, and downright rude, business practices.
According to a lengthy article in The New York Times last weekend, Borker claims that “furious online chatter” is pushing his site higher in Google search results. As a consequence, he's never had so much web traffic. “I am in heaven,” he says toward the end of the interview.
Borker's approach is to embrace all negative criticism - even generate criticism - so that his designer eyewear business is mentioned frequently by web surfers. Currently, he is so excited about his odd-ball marketing approach and mainstream media attention that he posted this on the company's Twitter page: “WOW we are famous.”
Famous? Maybe infamous. Hated? Well, there's that.
A Facebook “fan” page for the business suggests that one should shop at DecorMyEyes.com only if you like getting ripped off. The account is filled with complaints from buyers like this one from Sarah Scott Lambert: “I finally called and demanded to speak to the manager who was verbally abusive and told me I was an idiot for sending my glasses to an Internet company (for repair) and used many other colourful words.” Lambert is not alone. GetSatisfaction.com, which allows customers and companies to engage in “productive conversations,” is flooded with hundreds of comments alleging harassing phone calls and e-mails from the eyewear owner.
While Borker might be getting his 15 minutes of fame with all of this negativity, his approach is a reminder of how gaming Google search results can corrupt the quality of those results. Whether a company is relying on negative criticism to move higher in the rankings or depending on aggressive search engine optimization tactics, users are bound to turn to social search in order to get trustworthy information. In other words, if I want to buy a pair of sunglasses, instead of doing a random Google search that spits out thousands of results, I'd post (or search) on Facebook or Twitter to get recommendations from friends or associates on where to buy my new glasses.
While rudeness might be the key to Borker's online success right now, I suspect his strategy isn't going to last for long. I contacted Borker this morning via his website to get some insight into his plans for the future, after all this Google juice dries up, but I haven't heard back from him yet (and if these many online stories are true, I'm not sure I want to).
