This story began when I found out that our Career Center is a close partner with the scam widely known as Vector Marketing. They are a company that uses college students as independent contractors to sell Cutco knives. Although their current business model is considered “legal,” their practices are less than ethical not to mention their recruitment methods, which you have all experienced first hand. Although the word about this particular scam has reached most of us, the Career Center at Stony Brook has a very different opinion about Vector Marketing, which throws the legitimacy of this Partnership Council into question.

My biggest issue with Vector Marketing is the way they attract students, both in the content and quantity of their posters. It is usually advertised as part time work, big money and $17.25 for something (sounds awesome to me). I shouldn’t need to remind you. We find this all over campus, in bus stops, on student poster boards, in academic buildings and right outside of the career center. They also tile the posters, which is specifically in violation of the “1 poster per board” policy. I have yet to find out if they have permission from the university to hang any posters at all, which is an entirely separate issue.

I had an interview with the Career Center, who has been vehemently defending Vector Marketing via email. They continued to defend them without much regard for my concerns today. They mostly did this by claiming that all of the companies they work with have had questionable histories, and that it is not their position to judge these companies. They persistently diverted the focus from Vector Marketing to other direct sales companies who they assumed I would trust. About 20% of students who try it out have success with Vector. Apparently Vector is justified in having vague advertisements because of the stigma that is associated with sales. They hope students will come with an open mind If they don’t reveal that it is sales, or commission pay. The career center says this is an excellent marketing technique because it makes students look for more information. They think this is perfectly ethical.

Well, maybe not perfectly ethical. The Assistant Director of the Career Center did sympathize with me to some extent. She says they have had multiple talks with them over the years about their advertising techniques on campus, including a meeting just in January. Since then she claims they have reduced the number of posters they put up because “more posters doesn’t mean better results,” although I think a marketing company should know that. She also says that they monitor Vector’s table at career fairs to make sure they are not misleading the students. I am at least happy to hear that someone is keeping an eye out, but they still maintain a firm partnership with these people.

The Partnership Council is essentially a fundraising outlet for the Career Center. They invite companies whom they have worked with for many years to join this council in order to funnel money into the Career Center’s events and such. Seems fair enough, as long as the companies on the council are making a legitimate effort to serve the students. Our discussion came down to a difference of opinion. Even considering their arguments for the legitimacy of Vector Marketing, I feel that Vector Marketing operates unethically in order to recruit students. The Career Center sees no problem with it, and explicitly denied my requests for them to have further discussions with Vector about their on-campus marketing. They fundamentally disagree with my position, and most students’ opinion about this scam.

Now I am no fan of censorship, but there is one banner ad that has recently appeared all over the place titled “Flat Stomach Rule.” I usually find it right next to an article I am trying to read, and after being completely distracted and disgusted, I usually give up on the article. I rarely click on banner ads because I prefer text ads myself. This one in particular is simply too hard to ignore. The only way it could be worse is if it was animated. I won’t show it on this page, because then you would be too distracted to read the rest of my blog, but you can glance at it here.

What ever happened to ad content quality standards? I know they exist because I have been both an advertiser and a content publisher. As an advertiser I had to comply with certain standards to fit into a criteria for certain target websites. Although these standards usually only restricted adult content and profanity, the content publisher has even more control by blocking certain ads from appearing. I thought the system worked fairly well until now.

Are we now too sensitive to bogus diet ads to block them? Am I the only one who finds this distracting and distasteful? At the very least they could have put a little more effort into the design of the ad. In any case, I hope content publishers will find these soon and start blocking them. I also hope that bogus dieting companies will find better ways to trick me into shelling out a monthly fee (if I ever require their services). Until then, I’ll just have to try harder to ignore it.