Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

How Many Testimonials is TOO MANY ?

According to arindamchakraborty.com, you can have too many testimonials. I can’t view Kimkins.com, but I noticed an item on Google directing me to view ALL 719 TESTIMONIALS. One of the most successful websites in the weight loss niche has ZERO testimonials. Fatloss4idiots.com relies more on effective advertising.

Kimkins.com seems to be set up so that a handful of testimonials are randomly called up from the database to display on the front page. The top one showing on the google cache of the homepage reads as a story of failure before it is truncated. Given the fact that Kimkins is a dishonest marketing of a seriously flawed diet, it’s not surprising that the testimonials leave a bit to be desired. Hey, at least there are a LOT of them

Could ReputationHawk.com Help Kimkins?

ReputationHawk.com has an interesting business model. It caters to businesses and organizations that have been the victims of effectively targeted criticism on the Internet. I can imagine that anyone would be looking for help if they Googled the name of their business and saw more bad than good on the first page.

Google Kimkins and you see words like fraud, dangers, nightmare, controversy and survivors.

Heidi Diaz and staff spent much of the early post exposure period changing the site over and over again in response to precise criticism and repeatedly claimed that past criticisms were no longer valid. This sounds like the first step that Reputation Hawk asks their potential clients to take. I still have my doubts that they would be interested in Kimkins because of the big lie on which it was based. That’s not going away.

Actually Chris Martin of ReputationHawk told Newsweek that “Some people have made their bed and need to sleep in it.” What I think he means is, his service is intended to push unfair and/or outdated criticism off the first page of a Google search, not valid and current stuff. I think that as well as being wrong, that would also be MUCH more difficult.

Unbiased, a Definition

Most people with a reasonable amount of education and experienced already know what unbiased means. I am not claiming to be unbiased. If you were to Google the word ‘Kimkins’ you would see the word unbiased, which means free from favoritism or self-interest, describing Kimkins Review, the affiliate that to this date still publishes the fraudulent 198lb weight loss claim made by Heidi Diaz.

I think that affiliates have an undeniable self-interest. I have no problem with the concept of affiliate marketing, but those who do it well don’t lie. The best way to sell something is to actually believe that it is a good product and that your readers will benefit from buying it. I think many of us could name a small handful of people who put their names behind Kimkins when they believed that she was an actual weight loss success and then quickly put Kimkins behind them when they found out (or in some cases strongly suspected) the truth.

Mission Accomplished?

After looking at all the tasks posted on Kimkins Scam I felt a bit guilty about not being as busy as some other people. When I decided to jump in and do my share, I got a surprise. Many of the promotional articles and posts about Kimkins have already been taken down. Here’s a 404 page. All the Kimkins articles at Awesome Articles have been replaced with the following words:

All Kimkins diet related articles have been removed from Awesome-Articles.com in response to the following news story:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=4162053&page=1

Kimkins.com is still up and running, but it is reassuring to see how responsive the article posting sites have been.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Scam

The blogger over at Kimkins Scam is quite a task master. Heidi Diaz and various affiliates have promoted the Kimkins website in a lot of different corners of the internet. Much of this effort can be swept away with a few well written complaints. There are various links and instructions related to this effort on Kimkins Scam. It is part of a broader effort to have the Kimkins site cease to exist.

The blog also has most of the Russian Bride Pics in one convenient location.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimorexia

Let me put this in the simplest of terms. Heidi Diaz did some smart branding with the Kimkins Experiment. Now that we know she was not actually subjecting herself to this experiment, you have to question the methodology and the conclusions as well as the validity of the results. You have to wonder about the people who swallowed the kool-aid and said Kimmer lied, but the diet is not a lie.

Kimorexia delivers the ‘information, revelation, references, quotes, debates and more concerning the “Kimkins” crash-diet and/or its advice’ that it promises. Using information to combat the disinformation about diet and health over at Kimkins is a recurring theme. There are also a lot of outgoing links to interesting corners of the Anti-Kimkins community/cause.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Slamboard

Slamboard definitely deserves a mention in this series of posts on anti-Kimkins. The photographs of an obese Heidi Diaz were published there first. These photos were taken by PI Robert Charlton of Alliance Investigative Services.

The focus of Slamboard has shifted away from the Kimkins Controversy lately, but the older posts are a great resource for everyone with an interest in the story. There are now lots of vocal detractors with inside information because most of the former insiders fled when they realized or suspected the truth… or they got kicked out for asking questions. Slamboard posts all comments that are not spam. There are several comments from Kimmer’s defenders and they make for an interesting read.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Dangers

This particular blog is worth mentioning because it’s most recent post contains a call to action with regard to getting Kimkins shut down. The material was originally on the LCF board.

My favorite post on Kimkins Dangers has got to be Heidi Diaz Comes Clean (Well, Sorta). The author quotes the coming clean item from Kimkins.com but adds personal commentary (in parenthesis and in red). Some of these are pretty much exactly what many of us were thinking as we read Heidi’s words back when she first wrote them.

Is Kimkins Unstoppable?

I can’t help but grumble over the fact that all of this could have been stopped over a year ago when myself and others tried to discuss Kimkins’ fake Success Stories photos

This quote from Anti-Kimkins dates from early October of 2007. The author’s complaint is related to deletion of posts on LCF that criticized Kimmer and her business practices long before a concerted effort resulted in exposing the fraud. The fact is that Heidi Diaz was and is a relentless and innovative manipulator of people and she could easily use her skills and the forum rules to full advantage. One can assume that she actively portrayed criticism and doubt as ad hominem attacks. I don’t disagree with the quote, but nobody KNEW until the PI pictures were taken.

I was going to wait until October of 2008 to make a post about this quote, but I actually do think that Kimkins will be gone by then.

Kimkins Exposure

The tangled web that is the Kimkins Controversy was given the cookie-cutter treatment of television journalism a few days ago. It is great that countless people who may have never heard of Kimkins got the basic messages that it is a fraud and that it is not a well researched and safe way of eating.

Actually, I am curious as to how many people would have seen this item on Good Morning America. I was surprised to learn that the TV show is aired in Europe, the Middle East, the Philippines and Australia. The show spent a lot of years as the #1 morning show in America. In November 2006, GMA averaged 5.1 million viewers. It has been a close second to The Today Show for many years.

So it’s quite likely that millions of people saw this news item. The only website that was mentioned and shown on television was Heidi’s site. It may be a bit early to look for the effect of the television exposure on her traffic, but so far it seems to have been minimal.