Billion Dollar Bully Just Released
This is pretty exciting and a long time in the making!
Back in 2015, I was contacted by Kaylie Milliken of Prost Productions about a documentary she was working on. The documentary was premised on the million dol… no, BILLION dollar question, “Does Yelp really help consumers find the best local businesses, or are they a multibillion dollar marketing racket?”
Kaylie was looking for someone who can help explain the Yelp’s paid advertising program from a marketing perspective with factual backing (and was introduced to me via a referral). I’ve had experience with Yelp, both as a business owner and also as consultants who have engaged with Yelp’s paid programming. My experience combined with my expertise in the online marketing / growth marketing space put me in a unique position to provide insights that can benefit business owners (and viewers of her documentary).
I agreed to the interview and go on film.
A few months later, she along with her team met me in person in beautiful Orange County, California filming our interview (we had two interview/filming sessions). This was four years ago.
Well, I am excited to inform you that after overcoming a lot of film-making hurdles (read about Kaylie’s journey on her blog) and with help from Virgil Films & Entertainment, Kaylie and her team successfully got the film released on Amazon Video, iTunes, and DVD and you can watch it here (or just Google for, “Billion Dollar Bully”).
I am honored to be a part of this documentary and happy to have been able to contributed to this project. I also have to say that I am impressed by Kaylie’s tenacity… not only did she take her idea to the finish line but she had to overcome a lot of challenges that would have doomed most other films-to-be.
Enjoy!
P.S. The ending scene with the Yelp rep was pretty comical… 🙂
Yelp call me every day wanting to get to test driver their advertising but I have yet to hear positive
feedback from any advertisers of Yelp. Can anyone vouch for Yelp advertising platform.???
Oh man, has yelp taken advantage of me. Again. My salesperson was misleading and outright lied. The problem is, you only find out about the lies after you are billed. The bill comes and they have a whole different view of the charges than your salesperson presented. When you call to discuss with them, conveniently they don’t have a recording of that particular call to review to validate what you are saying about the salesman and his promises about what you will be billed. The bottom line, they intimate that their lawyers are bigger than my lawyers and I can do or say whatever I want, but they’re not budging on the money. Their own records show that I didn’t have a single click to my website in over a month. They make outright promises that, sadly, are pure lies. They truly are bullies in every sense of the word. SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE!!!!
After two nightmares advertising with Yelp, I was duped again being told that I would only be charged per click up to my budget of $150. I have have one lead unrelated to my very small music lesson business and have just realized I have been paying $150 per month. I have over 1500 you tube Subs in my page and am about to start a campaign against Yelp. Should I beware?