|
We soon learned that our partner above was not the only goliath in the world which had surprises up their sleeves for us.
"When you walk in the wake of a giant you may just be crushed when they change course" - ME!
Being small, many of you have likely noticed advertising is our lifeblood.
We could not survive without it.
Sadly, the behemoths in the world decided, in the wake of a pandemic, it would be better to ban face mask advertising and sales. This ban was of products you were being forced to buy. Ones you could not leave your homes to get in many situations.
It created quite a problem.
Not only for you.
But
For people like us trying to help.
It jeopardized our Facebook pages, google accounts and our business. There was nothing we could do but try to navigate between the lines and hope they did not notice.
Underlying it all was the one thing we knew.
People needed quality products and they needed them NOW!
Alas
We marched on.
I write this not to complain but to demonstrate how many different times we have had to zig or zag.
Since this time we have been hit numerous times by Facebook. In fact, our Facebook store has never been restored to its original condition. Our best ads have all been turned off and rejected. This left us to start anew and spend additional money testing them.
There were times every ad we had was rejected. If it was not for my husband's relentless desire to find cracks in the system, the goliaths would have stopped us months ago.
Through this determination, we silently slid several ads under the radar just long enough to actually produce some good in the world again.
While we are not certain it was us that changed this policy, the timing was a bit to synchronistic to ignore. Frustrated, Nick tried every avenue to reach out to Facebook and get these issues resolved.
How can a company so big ban the exact product people need but can't go source themselves in the middle of a pandemic?
This was his question, one he was determined to find an answer to. In early June, something finally broke free.
If you have ever tried to get through to a human at Facebook you likely will understand just what a feat the following is.
A tweet to a Facebook staff member was forwarded on to the company as an internal memo. It was an explanation of our experiences, struggles and ways facebook had hurt our efforts.
Days later, around June 10th, Facebook lifted the "cloth facemask ban".
As noted above we really do not know if it was us that nudged this forward.
But
Let's be honest.
It is fun to believe it was.
It's something we will never know for certain.
But
I BELIEVE.
Do you?
Through this all we pressed on.
Our heartbeat needed our products.
We knew we could deliver quality products, in an acceptable time frame and at a reasonable price. At this time no one was doing all three that we were aware of.
No one except us.
At the same time as the above, another goliath stepped into the ring.
Google instituted a very similar ban. Theirs banned all facemasks from their platform. I'll be honest we are still swept up in this. Lost in a maze of google support tickets, misdirection, and uncertainty.
Our products on google have never been approved for longer than a day. In the wake of it, my husband's Google account has been caught in the crossfire, and currently, his UTV business can not post products to google shopping even though his products are completely unrelated.
All this,
because we refused to accept their policies as ok.
We refused to believe that not selling these products was an option.
And...
We refused to believe there were better alternatives.
|
