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Hey guess what? I'm #3 on Google for "Frank Kern" (broad & exact search) and #1 for "Frank Kern FTC Bust" and #1 on Google for "Frank Kern Asshole" and #2 for "Frank Kern Conman" and #6 for "Frank Kern Con Artist" and #1 for "Irwin F. Kern IV". Sorry about that Frank. But you had it coming. But by the same token if you Google "Malcolm Lambe asshole" - there I am in poll position.

I was just over at Google checking it out when I found a new post from Duff McDuffee, a real-life Philosopher (Paris is full of them)commenting on the so-called "awesome video" that Kern, Robbins and Reese are touting. Here's an excerpt from it and I'll give you a link to the rest of it.

Personal Development guru Tony Robbins is known for his infomercials in the 80’s advertising his “Personal Power” motivational audiotapes, as a “life coach to the rich and famous,” and his appearances in movies like Shallow Hal.

Robbins, who has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter, has recently released a couple of videos on his “training blog” interviewing internet marketers Frank Kern and John Reese. What most people watching these videos don’t realize is that they are highly-manipulative advertisements, almost certainly for an upcoming get-rich-quick-on-the-internet product–the field of expertise of both Reese and Kern.

Creating hype before the launch of an information product is a cutting-edge sales tactic that Frank Kern and John Reese both promote in their products. Here’s how they do it:

Release “free” videos of “authentic conversations” that aren’t apparently about any product, identifying a problem and creating buzz while distracting from any critical faculties a customer might have because you don’t realize you are being sold. This also creates a kind of guilt-tripping response in the customer if you give away a lot of free content, making the potential customer feel like they owe the seller for being so “generous.”

Then sell a very expensive product with a flurry of hype and a limited quantity available, increasing the sense of scarcity. This eliminates any possible conversation between customers as well as feedback to the company, as there isn’t enough time for anyone to discover if the product lives up to the hype before they are “sold out” (which is arbitrary for information products, as more 1’s and 0’s are of negligible cost).

Selling a very expensive product and creating the conditions for it to sell out quickly reduces the public conversation around it for customers will be less likely to share it with others, due to how much they paid for it. This creates cultish ingroups due to lack of feedback, further entrenching customers to purchase additional products, and reduces effective criticism for critics can’t know exactly what the products are. Often the marketers will take down their sales pages and videos afterwards, which further reduces potential criticism, and checking hyped-up promises against delivered products. This is bad for consumers and bad for business (unless you only care about your own bottom line).

Robbins’ “reality infomercial” videos celebrate the get-rich-quick gurus John Reese and Frank Kern as heroes. The videos reframe the fact that their products don’t work as the fault of customers not having enough “certainty” and “not taking action.” This is a tactic for distracting from the impossibilities of everyone “succeeding” in an extremely crowded make-money-online market, and distracting from the highly manipulative sales tactics Kern, Reese, Robbins, and others use to sell information products on the internet. Interestingly, nowhere in the videos is there any mention of what Kern and Reese actually sell!

Let’s look at the specific tactics used so far in this campaign:

First off, Robbins sent an email with “IMPORTANT” in the title, with a link to his video. To whom, Mr. Robbins, is this video important? Why is your sales cycle important to me?

If you pay very close attention at the beginning in this first video, Robbins implies that the three men were spontaneously getting together to chat, and says “we might as well film it.” Then why is there “spontaneously” a shot of the car driving down the road (camera #1), and two more cameras “spontaneously” in the backseat of the car ready to film before Kern calls Robbins to meet?

This is the first of many bold-faced lies in the Robbins’ video. If he had not lied about the obviously planned nature of this advertisement, perhaps the rest of it would be more trustworthy. Ironically, the tactics employed attempt to convey trust by portraying this advertisement as a spontaneously recorded conversation, thus bypassing critical faculties that consumers have when in sales situations.

There's a link to that video in one of the latest comments on the Frank Kern Mass Control or Mass Con? post below this.
Oh yeah...here's the link to the full enchilada from Duff McDuffee Robbins, Kern, Reese