So what's the status of the RECBC investigation into MAC Marketing's media manipulation stunt?

Yesterday we told you how it appears the infamous 'Chris Lee' has resurfaced as a sales agent at another MAC Marketing project: MThree in Coquitlam.

'Chris Lee' is fake name for the MAC Marketing sales assistant who, along with MAC administrative assistant Amanda Lee, presented themselves as house-hunting sisters to CBC-TV and CTV-BC. They claimed their parents would be in town from China for the Lunar New Year to help them purchase a condo.

It was, as we now know, an orchestrated lie undertaken by a number of MAC Marketing employees to deceive the media and the public.

There are still many unanswered questions about what happened that day.  All the public was ever told about the fiasco was this Facebook posting by MAC Marketing Solutions president Cameron McNeill...

...that and a short email sent out to media outlets by MAC. When he received a copy of that email, CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black tweeted:

In an email to CBC, MAC Marketing owner Cameron McNeill writes he implemented "appropriate actions" vs employees who duped media and that he accepted the resignation of a "MAC senior manager." But, McNeill won't comment on specifics, citing privacy concerns. Statement from MAC Marketing doesn't elaborate on what "decisive actions" it took, or who was fired/resigned after duping media.

It's disconcerting because there were a number of MAC Marketing employees involved in the whole media sham and no one knows the actual extent of their roles. 

In addition to the fictitious 'Chris Lee' there was her 'sister' Amanda Lee:

there was Nic Jensen:

there was the MAC sales rep who quarterbacked the fake couple through the display suite to deceive the TV cameras:

and, finally there was the MAC sales director who possibly set up the photo shoot, Melanie Briggs. CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black advises Briggs was supposed to be in attendance at the media op but was a no-show. Was she involved in the pre-planning of this deception?

All the players in attendance before the TV cameras that day purposefully lied to and deceived the media/public.  This raises huge questions about their character and ability to carry out their jobs in the real estate industry. According to the British Columbia edition of the Canadian Real Estate Association's Realtor Code of Ethics:

The REALTOR® Code of Ethics of The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is universally recognized by real estate professionals and consumers alike as the measure of professionalism in real estate. The REALTOR® Code is intended to define the high standard of performance the public has a right to expect from those licensed to display the REALTOR® trademark.

As REALTORS®, we accept a personal obligation to the public and to our profession. The Code of Ethics of The Canadian Real Estate Association embodies these obligations.

As REALTORS®, we are committed to:

• Professional competent service
• Absolute honesty and integrity in business dealings

• Co-operation with and fairness to all

• Personal accountability through compliance with CREA's Standards of Business Practice

To meet their obligations, REALTORS® pledge to observe the spirit of the Code in all of their activities and conduct their business in accordance with the Standards of Business Practice and the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Article 15: Advertising Claims

Claims or offerings in Advertising must be accurate, clear and understandable.

The actions of all the MAC employees at the media op that day were in clear violation of the real estate industry's Code of Ethics.  They blatantly acted to deceive the media/public. Based on this how can the public have faith or confidence in future real estate transactions with them?

When the story about MAC's deceptions originally broke, the Real Estate Council of BC (RECBC) announced that they were investigating MAC Marketing for false/misleading advertising for which  MAC faced fines of up to $20,000 and the individuals involved faced having their licences to sell real estate suspended.

So what's the status of that investigation? CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black tells us that he:

"wrote RECBC last week and was told their investigation is still ongoing. They couldn't say when it would conclude saying it depends on 'the volume of complaints' being looked into and 'how involved' the investigation needs to be."

Which brings us back to the promotional photo which shows MAC's sales team for the upcoming MThree development in Coquitlam. The photo caption doesn't list names but it sure looks like the sales team includes the MAC employee we know as the fictitious 'Chris Lee' and MAC sales director Melanie Briggs:

If this is actually 'Chris Lee', how can she be allowed to return to work while under investigation by the RECBC?

And what of Melanie Briggs?  We still don't know the extent of her involvement, if any, in this debacle.

MAC Marketing president Cameron McNeill has declined to hold a press conference to fully explain what transpired in this fiasco. Because of that the public still has numerous unanswered questions.

In any other field, employees would be placed on administrative leave while under investigation for breaches of a code of conduct.  Apparently this standard doesn't exist in the real estate industry.

Doesn't the public have a right to know if they may be dealing with RECBC members who are under investigation for misleading the public, especially when they may be purchasing thousands of dollars of real estate from them?

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MAC's infamous 'Chris Lee' appears to resurface on another MAC Marketing project

You all recall the infamous MAC-gate story, don't you?

That's the scandal where condo marketers MAC Marketing Solutions was forced to admit that two of it's employees had posed as prospective homebuyers in televised news segments on a supposed spike in sales around the Lunar New Year.

MAC Marketing Solutions president Cameron McNeill confirmed to media outlets that the two young women – presented as house-hunting sisters, whose parents would be in town from China for the New Year to help them purchase a condo – are in fact an administrative assistant and a sales assistant with MAC Marketing Solutions.

That sales assistant in question gained a certain amount of notoriety with her performance under the fake name, 'Chris Lee':

So how damaging do you think it would be to have a sales associate - who would go on television and deceive potential buyers - continue to sell condos for you? As a prospective buyer, would you trust her or her company?

We ask this in light of the fact a sharp eyed contributor to VCI has noted that 'Chris Lee' has apparently resurfaced on another MAC project: the MThree development in Coquitlam.

(hat tip BWilson - comment #116)

Profiled on MAC's facebook page, the development is showcased with several pictures:

One of those pictures (bottom right) presents the MAC marketing sales team and the caption says that this is "the MThree sales team ready to help you! Feel free to get in touch with your questions: phone 604.472.9555 or email info@liveatMThree.com" 

But look at who's front and centre in the photo.  Is that not the infamous 'Chris Lee', the MAC sales associate who so brazenly lied to us on the evening TV news in the MAC-gate affair? (click on image to enlarge). Someone on Facebook has apparently already posed that question to the MAC Marketing Facebook staff:

If that's the same individual, this presumably means Cameron McNeill's investigation into the MAC-gate affair is complete.  At the time he said:

When asked if the ploy may lead to terminations at the company, Mr. McNeill said it would depend on the depth of responsibility. “If it was blatant and on the hands of one person, then I think there might be some severe repercussions, but it’s hard for me to answer that without knowing all the details surrounding it.”

So what were the results of that investigation?

Based on what you saw on TV two months ago, would you have faith in buying a condo from this team if 'Chris Lee' is back to work without any accounting or explanation for what she did?

We're sure potential customers at MThree would want to have any concerns assuaged before engaging in any business deals with a sales associate who appears to be the one who so willing lied to the public last February.

How can potential customers not ponder, "if she lied to me on TV to sell condos, how do I know she won't lie to me now to close a sale?"

And what of the investigation by the Real Estate Council of BC? What assurances do we have they have looked into her role fully and have absolved her of responsibility for her actions? How is it she could so blatantly lie and misrepresent herself on TV and there not be any sanctions?

And our local media... do they not have an obligation to inform the public about what was really behind her performance on that evening newscast two month ago, especially if she is back selling condos again?

'Chris Lee's' apparent re-emergence to sell condos demands these questions be answered in the public interest.

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Thurs Post #4: CBC reports MAC faces having their license's to sell real estate suspended, cancelled and/or fines of up to $20,000 - Updated

(click on all images to enlarge)

The news clip is below.

And the BC-CTV coverage:

   

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Thur Post #1: MAC Marketing admits they mislead CBC-TV, BC-CTV and all their viewers/customers

Yesterday, on Facebook, a reader of this blog asked MAC Marketing Solutions about our Tuesday post suggesting that there may be some media manipulation going on by MAC.

The news stories showcased two sisters from China, Amanda and Chris Lee, and told us their parents would be coming to town for Chinese New Year's to buy them a Condo in Vancouver.

The story outlined how Asian buyers have been active in our dead market in recent weeks, that they were looking for many of the same things locals look for in real estate - and they're taking the plunge and buying.

The not-so-subtle message?  You should too.

Just one problem.

Not only does one of the 'sisters' happen to be a MAC employee (Amanda), but  according to her Facebook profile she's recently married. Scroll through the approximately 10 Facebook wedding photos and you can't find her 'sister' anywhere.

(Note: Amanda's Facebook account was closed to the public after it was prominently featured on this blog yesterday. Last night it had another 'alteration' when the account's last name was changed from Amanda Lee to Amanda Chu)

Yet according to the news stories arranged by MAC for CBC-TV and BC-CTV, we are to believe that Amanda Lee is looking for a condo with her 'sister' and that their parents will be coming to town to buy it for them?

Riiight.

It was all a fabrication, of course.

And in the face of the overwhelming evidence gathered by the local blogosphere, MAC had no choice but to fess up.

Chinese New Year is indeed a busy time across many of our communities. Last year at Maddox we experienced increased sales volume during our Chinese New Year efforts and this year have already sold a number of homes with several more expected. We do admit we should have been more transparent about the fact that a MAC Marketing Solutions employee was included in this story. We apologize for any misunderstanding that this may have resulted in.

Basically MAC used actors to stage a commercial for their condo development and then duped the news media to air their promotion on the 6:00 o'clock news for free.

The ethical line that has been crossed here cannot be understated.

MAC Marketing Solutions manipulated the news media to perpetuate a stereotype, then attempted to created hype around that stereotype which they hope will leverage phantom demand to encourage local buyers to "buy now before the Asian surge prices you out of the market"; all while portraying their fabrication as "news."

As one contributor noted,

This is truly insulting to thinking Chinese people. They must feel infuriated when they are stereotyped as they are in (the CTV.CBC) clip. A bimbo portraying a grown woman, waiting for parents approval to buy a home on a timeline predicated by some superstition?  

I would imagine that in reality, when a business plan is put into place by the Chinese, that no more consideration is given to the Year of the Snake than Warren Buffet gives to the horoscope.

CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black has advised me that he is following up on MAC's Facebook acknowledgement of the fraud.  

He has confirmed that he has brought the issue to his editor's attention and he was the one who posted to the Facebook thread asking for an accounting from MAC (click on image to enlarge):

Presumably there are plans, in the absence of a reply from MAC, to show up with camera's on their doorstep for some answers.

And who can blame them.

I imagine that since CTV-BC made this their lead story on last Saturday night's news, they will be keen to beat CBC to air with exposing this blatant exercise in media deception.

I mean nothing could be worse for a news outlet than finding out how your own reporters were duped by watching it explained on your rival's supper hour broadcast.

   

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Wed Post #1: More on the MAC story

Yesterday's posts generated a wave of attention, and rightly so.

The hype created by Chinese New Year is crucial.  And last weekend it seemed we were hit by a media blitz from all over.

But there was a central theme to all the media hype, behind which lurked MAC Marketing Solutions.

We saw them prominently in this article in the Vancouver Sun.

 “It’s hard to say what’s going to happen this year, but I expect we will see a bump in sales activity during the month of February,” said Cameron McNeil, president of project-marketing firm MAC Marketing Solutions.

They were also front and centre in this one over on CTV.

CTV took us to the Maddox condo development in downtown Vancouver. Maddox is being marketed by MAC Marketing Solutions and as MAC's Nick Jensen explains: "It's certainly one of our biggest times of the year. We see a lot of traffic over the next two weeks... certainly these two weeks are critical to developers and really set the tone for the market ahead" 

Critical?

How critical? Critical enough to manufacture the photo op to launch this important two week period? The CTV-TV story featured two sisters who were looking to buy a condo at Maddox: Chris and Amanda Lee.

Curiously MAC Marketing Solutions has an Administrative Assistant named Amanda Lee who not only works for MAC Marketing Solutions - but her current background says she's attached to the Maddox Downtown condo development profiled in the CTV-TV.  We learned this from a LinkedIn profile:

And as we noted yesterday, this Amanda Lee has a Facebook page and bears a striking similarity to the young buyer profiled in the CTV-TV story. If the two are one and the same, it raises some serious ethical questions.

Our post yesterday also had a curious twist. 

CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black contacted this blog stating that he would "like to do a 'myth busting' style piece on the supposed spike in real estate sales during Chinese New Year."  Awesome. We humbly suggested Mr. Black could start by looking into this Ms Amanda Lee and the conflict inherent in having a sales rep pose as a buyer for a crucial press op by the developer. If this is what happened, then the crafty photo op compounds the apparent manipulation by stressing that wealthy Asians are just like you and I... and are looking for the same things in a Condo. The (not-so) subliminal message being: the Asians are buying again, you should too! Now the only problem with that suggestion is that the newsstory was done on CTV-BC.  Rarely will you see one media outlet target the content of another media outlet. (Unless it involves a politician.  Can you imagine the uproar if Christy Clark set up a photo op and used a staff member to portray a member of the public as the central part of a photo op without revealing this in a disclaimer?  The media would be all over exposing that like white on rice.  There would also be widespread media disgust at having been manipulated in this fashion) But wait! It wasn't just CTV-BC that ran coverage of the MAC photo op.  So did CBC-TV. And it was Matthew Black himself that reported the story:

   

Basinga!  The expose can begin!

Interestingly CBC-TV starts it off with it's own subliminal slight towards the developers as they appear to ask if the developers are selling snake oil hype:

The CBC-TV story focused almost exclusively on the other sister we saw in the CTV-TV story, Chris Lee.  But Amanda is prominent in the CBC version. She is seen walking around with her 'sister' and posing as an interested potential buyer: 

Will we see an expose on this by CBC-TV? 

Or could it be that this was a legitimate story. Could it be that Amanda Lee is not only a member of the MAC sales team, but is also a customer - her wealthy Asian parents coming in for CNY to purchase one of Amanda's condos for the sister duo? Or maybe they are two separate people, the similar names a mere coincidence?

For what it's worth we followed up with Mr. Black on his original email.

He tells us he has gotten a few tips from the contributors to our comments section and that it's a story he will be pressing his bosses to pursue.

We'll see what happens.

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Tues Post #1: Media Manipulation? You decide.

Took a break for the long weekend, but let's pick up where we left off.

On Thursday we talked about all the hype in the real estate world with the upcoming Chinese New Year.

We told you about an article in the Vancouver Sun:  Realtors prep for Lunar New Year upswing in sales - In previous years, industry gets a bump during holiday time in China.

 “It’s hard to say what’s going to happen this year, but I expect we will see a bump in sales activity during the month of February,” said Cameron McNeil, president of project-marketing firm MAC Marketing Solutions.

Take note of that company, MAC Marketing Solutions. We'll be coming back to that shortly.

For now, back to the Sun article

McNeil said Asian buyers have been more active in the Metro Vancouver market in recent weeks than they were through the middle of 2012.

Asian buyer have been more active in the Metro Vancouver market in recent weeks?

We laughed at that on Thursday.  Smacks of media created hype to us, another lame attempt to generate phantom demand as a lever to encourage buyers to "buy now before the Asian surge prices you out of the market".

McNeil said his salespeople are seeing an increase in activity, including from Chinese buyers.

“To me, (Chinese buyers) are a leading indicator,” McNeil said. “What I mean is, when Chinese buyers are active, it is a little bit of a bellwether (for the overall market), and the Chinese are active.”

Buyers are taking their time, McNeil said, but for developments in good locations with “fair values, prices aren’t coming off and are selling very well.”

He added that locations with established neighbourhoods, good schools and proximity to rapid transit are popular

As frequent poster, Bo Xilai, noted:

Yeah, I can see wealthy Mainland Chinese buyers consider proximity to rapid transit as being SUPER important to their buying decision.

Why take the Bentley when you can ride the Canada Line?

Maybe Mr. MacNeil is trying to get his real audience – brokeass first time home buyers – off the fence.

That is exactly what we think the entire 'media campaign is all about, manipulating local first time home  buyers off their collective butts to get into the market.

All weekend long, articles appeared promoting this thread.

Perhaps the best was this one over on CTV. The title of the news piece: "Year of the Snake nets condo sales: developers"


CTV takes us to the Maddox condo development in downtown Vancouver. Maddox is being marketed by MAC Marketing Solutions... yes, the same MAC Marketing Solutions from the Vancouver Sun article on Thursday.

In the Maddox display suite, CTV introduces us to two potential Asian buyers.

Chris Lee, who moved to Vancouver from China two years ago, said she and her sister are looking to buy a hip downtown condo, and now that their parents are in town for two weeks celebrating Chinese New Year, they have financial help. 

“If we like this place we have to tell them and they make the decision,” Lee said. “Usually Chinese people like to buy during this time.” 

Condo developers embraced the influx of offshore buyers, with some companies bringing in additional Chinese-speaking staff to help sell units.

Chris does all the talking, but the two sisters are identified in the story. They Amanda Lee and Chris Lee.

So let's summarize here for a moment.  

The market is in a deep slump, but we get a big media blitz for Chinese New Year telling everyone the market is suddenly "alive in recent weeks with Asian buyers." Asian buyers who are looking for the same sort things in real estate that local buyers are looking for.

At the heart of the media blitz is MAC Marketing Systems. They conveniently back up their media campaign with two classic children of wealthy Asian parents, parents who are coming to town to buy them a condo for CNY.

See?  The market is alive and well... the overseas Asians are buying again, are you going to be left out?

Hmmm.

Not so fast though. These 'overseas wealthy Asians' might not be as 'overseas' as we have been lead to believe.

I know when I first saw this clip, the spidey senses were a-tingling. Didn't we see something like this last year when one of Cam Good's salespersons posed as a groupon condo buyer for Global TV? 

Other skeptics were having their doubts too. Over on VCI, Saint Patrick dug up an interesting profile on linkedin (click on image to enlarge):

Yep... you read that right.  

Coincidence of coincidences, MAC Marketing Solutions has an Administrative Assistant named Amanda Lee who not only works for MAC Marketing Solutions - but her current background says she's attached to the Maddox Downtown condo development. 

You don't say?  No ethic issues here, move along... I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

The weekend was topped off by an interesting email in my in-basket which I have only gotten around to reading early this morning.  It is from Matthew Black, a reporter from CBC-TV:

Hello, 

My name is Matthew Black and I'm a reporter with CBC Vancouver TV. 

I 'm looking to a 'myth busting' style piece on the supposed spike in real estate sales during Chinese New Year. I was quite interested by your blog posts on this subject. 

Would you be available to chat sometime today? I can be reached at 604.XXX.XXX or on my cell at 778.XXX.XXX 

-Matthew Black CBC News Vancouver

Appreciate the email, Matthew.  But the reality is that an anonymous blogger may not be the best interview for a TV reporter (kinda defeats the whole 'anonymous' thing).

But if you're up for it, I'd be willing to bet Amanda Lee would make a great focus for a 'myth busting style news piece.'

If the CTV Amanda and the MAC Marketing Solutions Amanda are both one and the same, why is the media standing by while the public is blatantly manipulated by the real estate industry in this fashion?

See if you can get her parents too. I understand they're in town this week.

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