Netty Awards Nomination Scam?

ByBen

I don't want to be saying anything that might get me in trouble with these people. I am guessing they will ask to pay to get nominated.

Name
Sarah
Email
sarah.levine@nettyawards.com
Subject
Netty Award Nomination
Your Message
Hello team! I’m reaching out because Ben Luong has been nominated for a Netty Award in the Digital Marketing category. Could you please have whoever is best suited to handle awards & press send me an email so we can finalize the nomination/press coverage? We’d love to get this wrapped up over the next week or so to meet our April deadline. Thanks so much!

I asked my favourite LLM and it says this. The message appears to be a scam. Here are a few red flags:

  1. Unsolicited contact: The message comes out of the blue, without any prior relationship or communication with the sender.
  2. Vague and generic content: The message lacks specificity about the award, the organization, or why Ben Luong was nominated.
  3. Sense of urgency: The sender is pushing for a quick response to meet an April deadline, which is a common tactic used in scams to pressure recipients into acting without thoroughly verifying the information.
  4. Unusual email domain: The email domain “nettyawards.com” is not a well-known or established domain for a legitimate awards organization.
  5. Requesting further communication: The sender asks for someone to email them back, likely in an attempt to engage in further communication and potentially request sensitive information or money.

It's always best to be cautious with unsolicited messages like this. If you're unsure, you can try searching for information about the “Netty Awards” online to see if it's a legitimate organization. However, based on the details provided, it's highly likely that this is a scam attempt and should be ignored or reported as spam.

Looking at the site, it does look decent though and maybe its like other awards but just a bit more obvious you have to pay to play. I have heard that a lot of awards are given out to sponsors so is this really any different? Hence the question mark in the title. I suppose if its cheap enough to enter it could be good value.

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7 Comments

  3. Ugh, Ben – your knowledge / awareness / SEO strategy is so good. I’m not hating the player or the game. Just admiring the way you use current events and provide a great source of knowledge to help everyone. You really are a GA4 expert 🙂
    And yes, this is the same “pay to play” technique used by many in the industry. Don’t waste your time – focus on your underlying business. Ain’t no captain “Save a business-owner” there 🙂

    Reply

  4. Being in the marketing biz for a long time, I know a thing or two about awards. In reality, all of them are ‘pay to play’. Even the big ones. You always need to be part of a federation or organisation, and in most cases, submitting an entry requires a fee.

    Netty isn’t a large player (yet), so like many smaller award shows, they do reach out to organisations within all their categories. I guess to have a good balance of contestants. But it’s up to companies to decide if they want to participate, no?

    It always makes me think of that award acceptance by the comedian Jerry Seinfeld:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ityRn2IA24A

    Reply

  5. Yep got this exact same email twice over 2 years after not replying to the first one.
    We just don’t care about awards like this – my background was at a large agency group submitting (and winning) awards for our agency in Australia, Asia, US and Cannes, and even the legitimate award shows are questionable – a few are very good (AFA for example).

    Reply

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