Stealing Information – A Case of Online Plagiarism
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Online Plagiarism — This morning we woke up to a Google alert we have set for Soft Sell Marketing to find a title and the short descriptive line beneath the title that sounded vaguely familiar.
The title read: Making Online Money With Soft Selling. So I clicked the link and was taken to a blog site called “Hao-Odnla.” I won’t include the URL because I don’t want to give them a link on this page. The article was dated May, 30, 2010.
As I read the article my initial response was “Wow. Soft Sell is really catching on.”
But as I continued reading my sense of familiarity grew exponentially. So I asked Judith and she said “That’s an article I wrote for ezineartilces.com.”
We checked Judith’s list of articles and sure enough, there it was, accepted on 1-5-2009.
A blatant case of theft – information theft. Bald online plagiarism.
The people at the bog site plagiarized Judith’s article word-for-word without any attribution. Her name was nowhere that either of us could find..
I copied the original article from her ezinearticles archive, pasted it into my email editor, copied and pasted their rip-off just beneath the original and told them to give attribution or we would get our attorney involved.
I then clicked the “contact Us’ link of their site and was given 4 email addresses to mail to. I clicked the info version and sent it off.
I quickly received — “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently.”
I clicked the other 3 addresses with the same result.
So this blog post is a warning. Beware this site. They claim to be a Press Release and Distribution Service but from what I can tell they are information thieves.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Jim
PS – If anyone at Hao-Odnla sees this post, contact me by leaving your comment.
Marketing Metaphors: What Do You Think?
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Metaphors are so essential to the way we communicate every day that we cannot get along without them.
A metaphor allows us to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another.
For example — if you say that you have a “roaring headache” you are expressing your experience of the pain in your head in terms of a loud noise. Or if you are so excited that you say ” I am over the moon,” you are expressing your feeling state in terms of cosmic height and distance.
We are so accustomed to metaphors that they usually go unnoticed. Most of the time that’s not a problem. However when it comes to marketing, and especially Internet marketing, the metaphor — Marketing as War — is the source of what is most offensive in what we all see online.
Also, if you are unaware of the meaning of that metaphor you are trapped into presenting your products and services in a way that seems “normal” — BUT that is not the only way, let alone the best way for any of us to market what we provide.
Marketing As War
Take a quick scan of the sales letters and promotional materials online and the language you will find in too many cases is:
Killer Copy: the metaphor suggests that the copy you read will somehow knock you dead — which, after all, is not what the seller wants. He or she 
wants you alive to buy the product.
Or perhaps the copy will kill off any objections you have and pave the way to the sale.
Weapons: the tools used by marketers are seen as weapons and the connection with “marketing as war” is obvious. But why relate to
marketing as war? And what does that make the customer — the enemy to be captured, subdued, coerced, corralled?
So the relationship between seller and buyer becomes combative.
Destroy Your Competition: there are many variations on this theme with different verbs: crush, wipe out, annihilate, attack, kick-butt, level, smash, trash — and more.
The obvious problem with war is the intent to do harm. Is it any wonder why marketing and selling are so offensive to so many people, sellers and buyers alike?
What does it mean to you when you read “killer copy,” “weapons,” or “destroy your competition?”
Success As Insanity
Success As Insanity is another curious metaphor that leads to expressions like:
Insane Profits: the more profit the more you’ll hear it said — “Those numbers are insane.”
Crazy: we were at an event recently where the word crazy meant good, and really crazy meant very good.
Why would crazy or insane come to mean good unless the results are so unexpected, or overwhelming, or out of proportion that madness is the only appropriate response — and then – that’s the description? And that’s more of a comment on the state of mind of the person using these terms than it is of the actual event(s) itself.
How do you feel hearing success equated with insanity?
New And Different Metaphors
Now, imagine what marketing and selling would be like if the metaphor(s) were different. For example, instead of Marketing as War, what if it were . . .
Marketing as Partnership
Marketing as Love-based Service
Marketing as an Exchange Between Friends
Marketing as Heart Connection
Marketing as Natural and Organic
Marketing as a Dance
Marketing as Healing
What will your marketing and selling be like when you use these metaphors?
What other metaphors do you suggest? What metaphors create the ground of integrity from which your marketing efforts arise?
We want to hear from you -
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Video Games – Violence – And Brain Development
By · CommentsFormer U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, declared violent or pornographic media a “crushing public health problem . . . a clear and present danger … blatantly anti-human….We must oppose it as we oppose all violence and prejudice.”
“Violence and pornography, which is a felony against the human spirit, are the atrocities of despair” Dr. Koop explained, adding, “The people who commit them have an appetite for outrage. They devour what we cling to as civilized life.”
Violent Video Games
Recently studies have shown that video game violence produces deleterious affects on brain activity.
Specifically, increased activity in the amygdala, which is that part of the brain involved with emotional arousal. There is also a corresponding decrease in another part of the brain having to do with self-control, inhibition, and attention.
The net result — a desensitization to violence — as witnessed recently in New York city when a good Samaritan, rushing to help a woman who was being assaulted was stabbed by the assailant. The assailant and the woman fled, the man laid on the street bleeding and 24 people walked by without doing anything to help him. The Samaritan died.
So Why Are We Writing About This On A Blog Dedicated To Marketing?
Because when we are committed to Soft Sell Marketing — we are committed to respect and care for those who buy from us and the effects of our products and programs on our customers and clients.
As Dr, Koop said, violent media is blatantly anti-human and an atrocity of despair.
Studies have been produced that disagree. Specifically they point out that violent games have potential benefits — that is, they sharpen decision making skills and hone reaction times to a fine point.
However, these studies lose their credibility when it is revealed that they were performed by researchers funded by the multi-billion-dollar game industry.
Kidz Time
Several weeks ago Judith and I, wandering around a casino here
in Las Vegas, walked into an arcade called “Kidz Time,” and it was packed with kids ranging in age from 10 to about 16 — males and females. They were excitedly, some rabidly, shooting at electronic figures on the screen. One “couple,” a boy and a girl about 12 years old each, had huge guns. They were in a fierce competition, each determined to get more kills to defeat the other. As we watched, they didn’t even know we were there.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take on a case in which a California law banning the sale of violent video 
games to children is at issue. The justices will decide whether or not the law is too restrictive because it denies access by minors to material that is often very graphic.
Makers of video games argue that the law goes
too far. They want to rely on their own voluntary in-house ratings system as providing sufficient information for parents to decide the appropriateness of various video games.
Deep and Abiding Impact
As practicing clinical psychologists for many years, studying the deep and abiding impact of our early years on the developing brain and forming the basis for a lifetime of behaviors, we know that the compelling intensity and high drama of violent video games captures the mind in a way that is profoundly damaging.
The war and battle video games reward violence and mayhem and killing with high point totals, flashing lights, clanging electronic music, the peer approval of everyone watching, leaving the child, teen, or adult with a sense of accomplishment and triumph – and a sense of pride and well-being for having engaged in this blatant anti-human behavior.
We all know this kind of competitive massacre is blatantly anti-human. We don’t need Dr. Koop to tell us that. Or do we?
The video-gaming industry claims more studies are needed because the correlation between their products and anti-social behavior is not proven.
What this translates to in simple terms is — the whole point is to make more and more money regardless of the impact on the users and the industry will do whatever it can to maintain its profit levels.
Mind Abuse
This kind of marketing and selling is avaricious. Those who engage in it have no sense of and perhaps even no desire to know the impact of their mind-abuse on others, especially children. At bottom they have no sense of the other, period, or they couldn’t blithely promote their violence to the public under the protection of being “within the law.”
We are glad to see the insidious power of these violence-driven video games coming under scrutiny. That investigation will be a service to us all – we trust.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
To Refund Or Not To Refund – Beware The Black Hole
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Over the years I have heard of some pretty restrictive 
contracts. But recently I’ve spoken with a number of people who’ve come up against No Refund contracts.
Not just any No Refund contracts. One expensive event registration we know of offers a refund ONLY up to some time BEFORE the event begins. Once the event is underway, a refund is out of the question.
Perhaps the most egregious type of No Refund contract is a long term contract (six month, one year, two years) — most often for a coaching program to the tune of $10,000 , $15,000, $35,000, $50,000, $100,000 and even higher. And the contract is signed BEFORE the program begins, before you have any experience with the program or the coach’s style or approach. And once you’ve signed the contract a refund is out of the question – no matter the reason.
It’s the Law
Now, I must acknowledge that these types of No Refund contracts are legal. Should you be entering into a contract, especially a long-term coaching contract, be absolutely certain that you read it thoroughly before you sign it, because the No Refund clause is often not made evident.
Oh, it’s there alright, but not obvious (at least in most cases). How many coaches, or most marketers for that matter, would have the huevos to announce, up front, that as soon as you sign their contract your money is gone. Categorically, and without recourse, gone. NO REFUND.
No matter how they justify not making the No Refund announcement up front, they don’t because it’s a sales killer.
Black Hole
If you sign a No Refund contract, you are at the edge of a black hole, because, should you want your money back, and even for very legitimate reasons, you have no legal standing if the person who has your money refuses to refund it.
Now most merchants are ethical and honorable, and if your circumstance is reasonable, they will return your money. And it makes just good business sense to do so.
And some coaches offer their programs on a month-to-month basis. We are in a program like that right now and are getting tremendous value without the desperate pressure of thinking — “I damn well better get everything I can, because my money is gone.”
This brings me to the point of this post.
What is the moral imperative with regard to a NO REFUND long term contract?
The fundamental point at issue here, no matter what good faith and actual value someone has to offer, is that there is no way of knowing whether that value will be effective for you if you don’t have a chance to test it and find out. If the No Refund policy is iron-clad, there’s no way to find out without the risk of losing your money with little or no value coming back.
The transaction places the entire risk in the hands of the buyer. The seller is free to behave in any way he or she wants to with impunity.
Immanuel Kant, a major philosopher of Western civilization, put it this way
(this is my paraphrase, but the idea is close): If the action you are about to take were to be elevated to the level of a behavioral principle for the whole of humanity to adopt, would you follow through with it?
Another way to ask the question is: Would you want to be treated as you are about to treat others?
The evidence shows that there are those for whom this principle does not apply. Rather than some variation of the Golden Rule they opt for The Rule of Gold.
So beware when you’re presented with any kind of contract. Most especially, look first for the refund or return policy. And look in the small or fine print. That’s where you’re likely to find it.
And, of course, if you are satisfied, then go forward. But remember, enter into that No Refund contract as though your money is gone. Because, if down the road you cease being satisfied, there is no recourse. Your money is gone. Unquestionably and categorically GONE.
Judith and I understand that in certain cases, like offering downloadable products that cannot be returned, making the sale a No Refund transaction is reasonable –IF AND ONLY IF you make your No Refund clause completely visible during the buying process.
But in the case of buying without trying, or shifting the entire risk onto the buyer just because the seller “believes” he or she has a “so much value to offer” (which involves a degree of narcissistic grandiosity that, in itself, should be a warning sign) NO REFUND contracts should be banned.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Jim
“The Joneses” – A Terrific Movie
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Recently we saw the movie “The Joneses.”
We’ve set up a Google Alert for the phrase “Soft Sell Marketing.” Generally we are made aware of sites that have to do with business — no surprise.
But in came a blog site that carried the writer’s review of “The Joneses.”
We don’t go out to the movies much. We generally wait to rent and watch at home. But the writer’s comments were completely intriguing.
Well he was right. The movie was delightfully surprising even though there are some rather dark parts — not too dark, though.
And I’m writing to say that it supports Soft Sell marketing and everything Judith and I and all of us are doing to re-invent the meaning of commerce and our whole relationship to the meaning of money and materiality.
I’m not going to say more except to recommend “The Joneses.”
And let us know what you think.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Jim
Soft Sell Is NOT No Sell
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We have been trumpeting the Soft Sell approach ever since we came online as marketers, because marketing and selling are so much more than just making a product or service available for money in exchange. They are human-to-human connection interactions.
Unfortunately, and too often tragically, that connection is commodified into
pricing, and packaging, and bottom line objectives — through which people are left in the wake — the current economic metldown is a prime example.
Suddenly, in the last two years, the idea of Soft Sell has exploded onto the scene (just set up a Google Alert for “soft sell marketing” 
and you’ll see). But the response from many has been reactionary. From hard sell to no sell. From in your face to invisibility.
There is nothing wrong with marketing and selling as such. To use an old cliche — you can use fire to cook your meal or burn down the house. It’s the marketing and selling that is
based in fear, scarcity, false urgency, greed, hyper-individualism, and the bottom line as the only acceptable measuring tool — and that melieu of desperation creates repulsion among the buyers and much heartache among many sellers.
For all of us as well as the planet, in order to create a supportive and prosperous future, Soft Sell — loved-based and conscious — leads the way, because, first and foremost, it’s our human connectedness that deserves priority and respect and serves as the base for all of our actions — commercial and otherwise.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
For a deeper look into what Soft Sell is and how y0u can adopt it into your business, please read our book — The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back. There are 60 marketing no-cost bonuses waiting for you when you purchase the book.
Thanks — Judith & Jim
Marketing Madness — A Warning !
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Marketing Madness? What’s the warning?
You can find incompetent marketing everywhere.
Saturday morning we decided to go antique shopping. We both love antiques and it’s always such a pleasure to find a hidden treasure.
Judith researched antique shops in Las Vegas and found a mall not far from where we live. As we approached and could see the building, which was to be our first stop, our excitement rose.
“It looks like it’s going to be a fun morning,” Judith smiled. And in we went.
This mall contained spaces where dealers showed their wares. It wasn’t apparent from the outside, and not even as we walked through the front door, but the place was huge — comparable to a Home Depot.
We were both a bit stunned.
So what’s the warning?
Check out the picture. There were at least 100 individual dealer spaces/stalls, like the one Judith is standing in, and every one was as over-stuffed as the one you see above. Waaaaayyy too much stuff !
Remember the marketing rule — don’t give customers too many choices. They won’t make a decision. This mall was an example of marketing madness — as though over-size and way-too-much mattered more than connecting with customers.
As we made our way through the place, we were both emotionally going down and down.
“Not another space!” Jim groaned.
“Not more stuff!” Judith whispered.
Instead of enjoying the treasure hunt, we both wanted to flee.
“This is horrible marketing,” Jim said. “Madness. It’s almost obscene, like they want to show me everything they’ve got. No discrimination.”
“I know,” Judith said. “Instead of bringing us in, it feels like this place is driving me to get out.”
Selective Specificity
When it comes to what you offer, selective specificity is key. Show your prospective customer one product or service you’re offering and take them deep into its benefits. Show them what they will gain. Don’t overload them with features. That just comes off as narcissistic — and this mall was pathologically narcissistic.
In fact, we’d picked up a pair of pink depression glass salt and pepper shakers and had them on hold up at the front counter — but we were so eager to get out of there we lost our attraction to them — and they’re still there.
Marketing Madness
Marketing madness is focusing all about you, while your clients or customers want to know what’s in it for them.
Finally we left. We did not come home with an old treasure. We left witnessing a serious marketing error — a warning to us and we pass it along to you.
Stay away from the marketing madness of TOO MUCH. It will cost you customers and relationships.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim
Litigators Need Soft Sell ?? !!
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In an article I read recently by Todd R. Brown about
lawyers and lawyering, he wrote:
Courtroom theatrics make for reliable TV drama, and they might sway real juries pondering emotional cases. But the pyrotechnic rhetoric of a hard-charging litigator is a world apart from everyday client salesmanship.
Wow!!
Brown goes on to say:
Teaching effective soft skills that every businessperson should know to relate to customers, managers, colleagues and subordinates hasn’t always been a top priority in law, but it should be.
Double Wow and Holy Cow !!! A game-changing discovery!
CLIENTS ARE PEOPLE even clients looking for litigators.
And in the same article, Ely Anderson was quoted as saying:
There are brilliant attorneys who don’t enjoy selling. Not everyone enjoys the whole business development aspect,” she says. “If you’re going to be successful in your job, you really have to be focused on developing clients rather than just the marketing.
How about that? People skills are necessary for dealing with people!
Who’d'a’thunk it?
Emotional connection, sensitivity to client needs, listening — really listening, getting beyond narcissism, grasping the fact of interdependence, co-operation rather than one-way dictating, empathy, and consciousness are the heart and soul of the Soft Sell approach — Soft Sell connecting.
Given our adversarial judicial system, yes, you want your litigator to do his/her job in court. But to do that your litigator has to get to know you deeply, not just cognitively. It’s not just about gray matter. It’s also a matter of heart — which Brown and Anderson imply.
And why?
Because It’s all in the Connection,
Jim
Real Wealth: It’s Devalued When Money Becomes Involved
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Real wealth – what is it and why is it devalued when someone assigns a price and asks for money?
Before providing an answer to this question we want to say that the reason behind this blog post is our desire and intent to bring to your attention the serious distinctions between words and concepts that are bandied about on the Internet for the purpose of marketing and persuasion.
Words and concepts are important. They’re supposed to frame and represent the reality that we all experience. But when they are used merely to persuade, they usually end up creating illusion. And that hurts us all.
So what about “real wealth” and why is it devalued when someone assigns a price?
This question is brought to the forefront when service providers confront the issue of charging for their products and services. And as a Soft Sell service provider, you no doubt have experienced feelings of guilt, shame, anger, even rage, and those feelings stand in the way of offering your expertise and making a substantial living at the same time.
In our book The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back, we offered a number of reasons why this is the case and now are adding another that I (Jim) came across in a book by David Korten: Agenda for a New Economy.
Among his characterizations of real wealth he includes happy children, personal health, caring communities, and a beautiful, natural environment as just a few — which you, no doubt, agree with.
He also elaborates what he calls phantom wealth: “money created out of nothing without a need to produce anything of real value in return”except an increase in the amount of money that can be generated for its own sake. In effect it’s an increase or decrease in numbers on a ledger sheet or across computer platforms. Money for the sake of money.
Here’s why service providers, Soft Sell marketers feel there is a problem even though they can’t clearly and specifically articulate what it is they feel.
Real Wealth
Real wealth has very much to do with caring relationships. Caring relationships have very much to do with sincere emotional connections. And sincere emotional connections are mutually supportive. In such an experience you hold those you’re connected with in true, if not high regard.
Simply said, real wealth has to do with valuing life above all.
The Money Realm
In an economy of phantom wealth, where money is revered if not worshiped as the highest ideal and that’s the global economy we all live in, caring relationships tend to be seen as commodities and given price tags.
Think of it this way. When parents give over child care to paid child care workers, often for good and pressing reasons, to be sure, but, nevertheless, the caring parent-child relationship becomes monetized – in simpler language, moved into the money realm.
Many service providers we’ve worked with including ourselves struggle with that move – from the felt and cherished sense of the value you feel in a caring relationship into the marketed and priced-out realm of an exchange of goods and services. So you end up feeling pretty squeamish.
A Medium of Exchange
Money has been defined and accepted as a store of value in and of itself. But the fact is it’s not a store of value. It is strictly a medium of exchange that represents value. By itself money is actually meaningless.
Imagine, for a moment, a pile of bills laying on your kitchen table. If those bills had no exchange value, in other words, if you could not exchange them for something that supported your well- being, what could you do with them? Paper your walls, perhaps?
It’s an Illusion
But in our world today, money, and the accumulation of more and more of it, is thought to be the end in itself. The more money you possess the more value, some people call it wealth, you are believed to possess. That pile of bills you have on that table, just laying there, is believed to constitute wealth .
But that wealth is phantom wealth. It’s not real. It’s an illusion.
Well-Being
But the real value, the real wealth, does not lie in money. Real wealth exists within the well-being you experience with your customers and clients and from the products and services you offer to those who need what you provide.
The problem is that the well-being you feel and work to see others experience is culturally ranked second to the money charged and paid — when in fact, with even just a little bit of thought, it becomes clear it should be the other way around.
In our book, The Heart of Marketing, we’ve said that for Soft Sell, heart-based marketers, money
ranks second but equal to our concern for the well-being of our customers and clients. When the reverse is held to be true there is a disconnect.
As a Soft Sell marketer, you know well-being is the point of your intentions and actions, your own well-being and that which you want your customers to experience. And you know you have to charge for what you do because you have to earn a living.
Nevertheless, you feel ill at ease, perhaps without even knowing why.
It’s because you can’t, no one can, reduce life to a commodity. But that’s the way the worldwide economic system works, That’s what it would have you do, luring you with the idea that real value is in the money. But that’s a phantom value. And it’s that confusion that causes the emotional and spiritual pain.
That’s because of misplaced value – measuring everything by money which, in itself, is empty.
Money is important – as a medium of exchange. It is necessary. But the next time you go to market with what you have to offer, know in your mind and your heart that enhancing life is what you’re about.
Yes — you will have to ask for money in exchange. But knowing what you’re about, and remaining true to who you are, will prevent you from sliding from the life realm, the real wealth of well-being, into the money realm, the phantom wealth of pieces of paper masquerading as something they are not.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim
Economic Value or Real Value? Which?
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The word “value” is tossed around a lot on the 
Internet in the various email and sales pages used by online marketers. But what is economic value and what is real value?
We’ve always been troubled by a techniques known as “stacking.” That’s when a marketer lists a number of products, usually offered as bonuses, and gives a “value” to each one. Then he or she totals those “values” to show how much you’re getting in comparison to the price of the product or service. We’ve done it not knowing any other technique.
But just last night, I (Jim) experienced an AHA! I saw what we (Judith & I and all of us who are similarly troubled by the meaning of “value”) can do. But first . . .
What Is Something Worth?
