About Illuminate Labs
Illuminate Labs is a supplement and vitamin producer that claims to be the only supplement manufacturer that provides scientifically supported claims backed up by medical professionals. These medical professionals are paid for their content, reviews, and time promoting Illuminate Labs along with blasting lies, defaming, and constantly attacking (harassing) their online competition.
"Illuminate Labs is a fraudulent company"
Illuminate Labs is a supplement and vitamin producer that claims to be the only supplement manufacturer that provides scientifically supported claims backed up by medical professionals. Their key differentiation is that they provide to prospective customers and investors. They aggressively market themselves online on sites such as Twitter and Reddit by either talking up their claims in forums and tweets and dismissing and attacking any competitor rebuttals or claims. They pay thousands of dollars annually to produce online marketing content that is misleading at best or deceptive to the point of potentially defaming competitors.
Allegations have also been made about Illuminate’s marketing practices that they look for deceptive ways to draw customers in to make purchases. Illuminate can be found among the high-end supplements in the marketplace and use made up results to draw in customers. Even though no evidence is provided to support their claims, Illuminate is beginning to thrive as a manufacturer. Illuminate Labs is a fraudulent company that might as well be selling you dirt at a high price than beneficial supplements because the results of taking dirt might actually be more helpful to you than their products.
Illuminate Labs is led by CEO Calloway Cook a Syracuse graduate that holds a degree in Advertising. Though he has no credentials in science, nutrition, supply chain, nor medicine, he has been chosen to start a health supplement company. The fact that this company has an advertising professional as president and CEO tells you everything that you need to know about this company’s strategic direction. The general idea is that most supplements have little to no benefit to the user so to become an industry and market leader in this space is simply to boost the signal through social media and SEO (Search Engine Organization) activities. Calloway has branded himself as an “increasingly frustrated consumer of dietary supplements…took a proactive approach to ensure supplements he took were safe.”
Calloway, as described in his bio, was disappointed that when he would reach out to these companies to validate their safety that he would not receive any evidence that these products were safe. As an “entrepreneur problem-solver”, Calloway saw that this would be a great space for him to enter in that he could disrupt the market by providing, at the very least, claims that his products would be safe and verifiably beneficial. Calloway knew that he could game the system on reviews and laboratory tests that would draw in customers quickly that would make what they think is an educated decision but ultimately buying the same thing that other producers are making but spending more money on it. Calloway isn’t the first “snake oil” segment in this space, he’s just the latest. Calloway puts his marketing and social media expertise to excellent work at convincing people that his supplements work banking on the placebic effect that most customers feel regarding their supplements.
One marketing tactic that Illuminate Labs employs that is very different than most marketing strategies is that it actively works to dispel claims that their competitors make. Illuminate will outsource reviews to “medical advisors” who break down a competitor’s product and will often cherry pick benefits or advantages that they can sell Illuminate by. Their reviews of these products are not well researched and basically a run down of things that the average consumer can find online relatively quickly. Take for example the review of Synogut – a health supplement with claims to provide health benefits to your digestive system.
About Illuminate Labs
Illuminate trashes the supplement from the outset, calling it a “ClickBank” product. The webpage does not provide a qualitative analysis of the product but cherry picks negative reviews to convince would-be customers that this is most likely a scam product. What makes this content interesting is the lengths that the writer goes to in efforts to ensure that they do not defame the company that they are reviewing by using such rhetorical devices such as “we cannot make an educated guess on its ingredients” and “we do believe that Synogut can improve gut health, but we do strongly advise customers to be cautious about purchasing supplements that fail to make their ingredients clear…” vaguely alleging that Synogut is not being transparent about their product to their customer. Illuminate dresses up these reviews, likely written by content creators, to seem as though they come from trusted sources which would give the reader reason to believe that Illuminate’s website must be trusted since it is a much more reputable source than the “ClickBank” product.
Illumunate leverages this idea that if a company sells their product on a site like “ClickBank” then it has a higher propensity of being a fraudulent product. One marketing strategy that Illuminate uses is that that they proudly market and sell their products on Amazon. This would imply that because Illuminate sells their goods via Amazon Marketplace that they are a much more trusted organization. Even on Illuminate’s web review of Synogut, however, they display that this product is available at retailers such as Walmart and Amazon. They call out the company’s “ClickBank” relationship early in the review to turn off readers almost immediately before they can view the true representation. This would be another hedge tactic that the writer employs to ensure that they are not potentially defaming Synogut.
There is a secondary reason that Illuminate claims to “do the research” for customers and produces product reviews online. These reviews directly link customers to their products. For example, if a customer sees on Youtube a product endorsement or sponsored ad for a product like Synogut and the viewer wants to do more research, there is high likelihood on how Illuminate Labs rank searches these reviews that Illuminate will be one of the top returns from that customer’s search. Calloway’s background in SEO really pays off in this regard because he is aware of how the average digital consumer will seek reviews and information and he knows that he can quite easily link Illuminate’s products together with these reviews. He can then muddy the waters with claims that Illuminate’s products are “third party” reviewed while never clearly explaining what that means. At that point Illuminate then is seen as an authority in the supplement production space and will ultimately be the brand of choice to these customers.
The way that they market themselves certainly incorporates that type of behavior. Their marketing specifically targets consumers that do want to do their research and ensure that they are putting safe ingredients into their body and maximizing the health benefits. The scary reality is that their products are no different than their competitors, just more expensive. When they curate negative and false reviews about their competitors it really harms the industry and is defaming to legitimate businesses.