Congratulations Bravo Net Solution shortlisted for the Top 10 eCommerce Consulting/Services Companies in APAC 2019.  

We’ve been receiving spam emails like this for many times from different emails and companies. 

There are many business news magazines in the market, but not all of them are true legit ones. Getting an award and recognition is definitely what most of the companies and the owner of the company are looking at after years of hard work. 

We’ve been approached by this so-called CIO Advisor APAC business magazine company. After a brief search on the company profile and looking at their website i realised that their existent are suspicious. 

How they started? 

This company basically aims tech companies in all over the world especially Asia to offer them an online publication via their magazine by offering them with interviews and awards and of course listing in their magazine with a certain amount of price, usually in USD range from 1.2k – 3k. They will try to convince you of their magazine’s subscribers and of course with a great exposure of your company in their website and magazine. 

 

Things got shady after deeper investigation towards the company. What we’ve found is that the company is not a legit magazine company, it starts by posting articles from other sites and modifying it into its own content. In fact most of the content isn’t authorised by the person who mentioned it in the article. How are they able to make it so convincing is that they are able to “fake it till you make it”. The more content you have in your website the more reliable you sound to the audience or even Google’s algorithm. 

 

I’m pretty impressed by the team’s online PR strategies to be honest. They have the patients and the ability to wrap the company looks like a legit one until some of the business owners believe that the company has a legit opinion towards the industry. 

 

I also went through their social media profiles especially linked in and I realised that the “employees” they work with CIO Advisor APAC  are mostly made up. Firstly you won’t be able to see much information about them and also their past employment. Secondly, all the profile as the same pattern of experience timeline , which they will list where they graduate from which University and then the next they will be working in the company. 

Among all these profiles I believe last one is a legit ones. 

 

 

These are the made up profile for sure.

 

I suppose the company name is ValleyMedia Inc according to various sources which registered in Florida US. 

 

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/P18000035671

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/harvi-sachar

https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.valleymedia_inc.c7fb463ec7f79696e081c1a6ee05742a.html

It sounds very convincing to you right? 

Devil is always inside the details. Here is what i’ve found out, 

Complaint from Better Business Bureau – https://www.bbb.org/us/fl/fort-lauderdale/profile/publishers-magazine/cioreview-0633-90553284/complaints

 

The point of the article is not only the complaints that are made by its customers but also they do provide recognition to the health care industry as well?! Seriously? 

 

I’ve also received several emails I believe is from the same company proposing to feature my company as “top 10 ….” in their magazine in various areas. 





The holy grail keyword is the “”Top 10 Most … in year …”. Most business owners will fall into these publicities,  CIO Advisor  promised that the amount they paid included the rights for the business owners to use it as marketing materials, they always emphasis that.

 

These are the websites that I’ve found out which belong to the same companies which I believe is just the tip of the iceberg. 

  1. https://apac.bankingciooutlook.com/
  2. https://www.cioadvisorapac.com/about-us/
  3. https://www.industryerareview.com/
  4. https://digitech-insight.com/
  5. https://industry-techoutlook.com/

 

There are also discussions around arguing if the company is legitimate which I found is good to know there are some who realised that this is a total BS company which is trying to sell you advertising space but convincing you with the top ten self made awards for the year in your industry. 

  1. https://arpr.com/blog/4-pay-for-play-scams/
  2. https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-publication-CIO-Review-viewed-in-the-industry-as-a-source-of-information-about-companies
  3. https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/4dgkwf/cio_review_magazine_is_this_a_scam/
  4. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-communication-misused-online-publications-companies-kartik-shah/
  5. https://twitter.com/SethGrimes/status/374945549968875520

 

CIO Advisor APAC portrays their company operates in the USA. but the fact that they are operating in India. If you happen to have any interview with them, I will assure you that they will only conduct the interview through email only. Which you barely know who is behind the email.

Pictures that i found from Twitter,

I would think that this kind of company shall not operate long and I even think that this is some kind of “scam” trying to convince the business owners to buy their package by aiming at their eagerness to getting recognition. Surprisingly there are many companies that fall into this! What I’m sharing below is just another tip of the iceberg. 

 

Actual companies that signed up for  CIO Advisor package (part of it listing)

  1. http://www.caso.co.jp/press/press190905.html
  2. https://agile.cioadvisorapac.com/vendors/top-10-apac-agile-solution-companies-2017-rid-20.html
  3. https://nuworks.jp/ja/2017/11/21/cio-advisor/
  4. https://www.facebook.com/equenti/posts/our-humble-thanks-to-cio-advisor-apac-for-recognising-equenti-in-the-top-10-lead/2685761431535856/
  5. https://news.yahoo.com/iclick-interactive-listed-top-10-130000598.html
  6. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bright-pattern-named-in-top-10-asia-pacific-telecom-technology-providers-by-cio-advisor-apac-300769271.html
  7. https://recoverypro.jp/en/news/our-parent-company-belfor-asia-named-the-top-disinfection-and-sanitization-consulting-service-company-for-2020-by-cio-advisor-apac/
  8. https://www.gyrfalcontech.ai/news/gyrfalcon-named-as-top-20-hottest-artificial-intelligence-companies-in-2020-by-cio-advisor/
  9. https://www.verrency.com/verrency-named-cio-advisor-one-top-10-apac-payment-solutions-companies-2018/

 

“Business” comes into play when there is a party willing to sell and there is a party willing to pay for the goods or services. CIO Advisor definitely portrays themself as a very legitimate company and I think they are not considered illegal in their existence and also the services that they are selling. It is the buyers who have to be careful on all the proposals that might sound good but it can be just some useless products or services that you might end up wasting your money for.

 

As business owners, we all know how important it’s marketing for a company. Being awarded and recognized in a certain industry definitely is a big milestone of the company and the founder of the company too. There are so many recognition and awards in the market to participate, choose the one well known with strict requirements, not the one that can be listed easily by just paying a sum of money.