There’s been lots of talk lately about “fake news” in the political arena. Around the Form and Face water cooler, however, fake news in the aesthetic enhancement industry has been a topic of conversation for years. We were reminded of this recently when one of our patients told us about a story of a miracle facial rejuvenation cream. She saw it advertised online in Cosmopolitan magazine. It turns out that the product is real, but the news story and website were not.
The problem of ads disguised as news is now so pervasive that Google is fighting back. According to a story in Wired, “The world’s biggest digital advertising company says it took down more than 1.7 billion ads that violated its policies in 2016—more than double the number of bad ads it eliminated one year ago.”
Dr Benjamin Norris and everyone at our practice in Bondi Junction want you to have the facts so you can tell the heroes from the zeroes and sort out the real news from the falsies.
Don’t Get Bitten By This Shark Tank Winner
On Shark Tank recently, the investors ponied up $2.5 million USD to buy into a new wrinkle cream. The deal generated a lot of headlines, as well as a flood of privately owned websites devoted to sales, not news.
The site our patient found appeared to be Cosmopolitan magazine online. It had a detailed story on the benefits of the cream and reported that Shark Tank and Cosmo were teaming up to offer consumers a free trial of the product if you paid $1.99 in shipping. This sounded suspicious to us.
We did some research and discovered that Shark Tank and Cosmo have nothing to do with free trial offers of the product. Instead, unscrupulous marketers were trying to lure consumers by trading on the name of established companies and disguising their sales sites as news sites.
4 Ways to Spot Fake News
When you’re reading a story you think may not be actual news, ask yourself these questions:
- Who’s the Source? – Of course not all news comes from the mainstream media. Still, if you’re reading about a revolutionary product on an obscure website, you may want to double-check the source.
- Is There an Advertisement in the Story? – A real news story does not include a link to purchasing a product.
- Where Do the Links Take Me? – The page of a legitimate news source will always have a way for you to get back to the home page. Don’t trust a site where anything you click takes you to the same sales page.
- Is This Labelled “Sponsored Content”? – Businesses can pay publications to print their advertorials. Sponsored content doesn’t have to meet the same standards as a real news story. (In other words, they can lie!)
News You Can Trust
If you have questions about surgical and non-surgical treatments that can help you look and feel spectacular, we invite you to call Form and Face on 02 9387 3800 for exciting, real news about advancements in aesthetic enhancement.