MLMs Promise Nothing
Market America
My family got involved with MA in the fall of 2005 after a year of debating if it was right for us. We disliked the flags, the forced gaiety, the fine print and the many rules; but eventually decided to keep an open mind and try to make it fun.
What did we get from our experience with MA?
A lot of “C-student” marketing materials!
That’s okay! MA has no reason to be ashamed of this! In the United States – you can even be President if you are a C student!
Straight from the “Company Information” web page, here is a self-description of Market America; a typical MLM program that attempts to differentiate itself as unique and different from all the other pyramid sales programs.
Market America is maturing into a trusted consumer resource of quality product solutions, thriving beyond the business cycle by harnessing the power of advanced Internet technology and the one-to-one marketing relationships UnFranchise® business owners cultivate with customers.
Huh? What does that mean? They should fire the marketing team that delivered such empty words. It happens all the time; we’ve just recently had to fire “marketing” staff that couldn’t write effectively either!
Good news: The owners of WIP have many years of practical marketing experience and can teach you to avoid using empty hyperbole and instead deliver concise communications to your readers. How can we teach you? Easy! Just read and learn our way of thinking:
Empty Words |
What went wrong |
is maturing into |
Never say what you are “going” to be – tell the reader/customer what you can do for them NOW. |
into a trusted resource |
This could also be read that the company is going to soon be a trusted resource ― when in fact they have been a trusted resource for 14 years! Anything over 10 is fair to brag about. Don’t leave anything open to “interpretation” in your Mission statement! (If you are still stuck in the 80’s and think you need a Mission Statement, that is!) |
trusted resource |
It’s assumed your customer trusts you. To raise the issue wastes valuable content space with an “empty” word and raises doubt. |
quality product solutions |
Just… quality? High quality or low? Does anybody claim to sell low quality products? |
product solutions |
In what aisle do you find “product solutions?” |
thriving beyond the business cycle |
Thriving beyond? Is this a typo? |
harnessing the power of advanced Internet technology |
“Harnessing“... ”power”... “advanced Internet technology?” Yeah, we hear that internet thing might be catching on! |
one-to-one marketing |
There is no big money to be made in “1-1” sales in consumer products. You should consider selling luxury cars or real estate if you like 1-1 marketing and making REAL money. If you are selling consumer products (and want to make any money) you do it to the masses. |
marketing relationships UnFranchise® business owners cultivate with customers |
Make sure you don’t let your customers know you are developing a marketing relationship with them – its proven consumers hate that |
Go ahead and follow our instructions and see how easy it is for us to teach you how to write sensible marketing statements!
WAS:
Market America is maturing into a trusted consumer resource of quality product solutions, thriving beyond the business cycle by harnessing the power of advanced Internet technology and the one-to-one marketing relationships UnFranchise® business owners cultivate with customers.
BETTER:
Market America has been a reliable resource of high-quality consumer products for 14 years and is now driving sales beyond traditional business cycles by utilizing the power of the Internet, and by enabling UnFranchise® business owners to cultivate one-to-one relationships with their customers.
See what we mean? Now it’s constructed correctly and says a lot more!
What else did we get from Market America?
Each month: more emails and CDs with sales & marketing information and tools - all mired in rigmarole and silly names!
We got a great laugh over the UFO’s program – I guess it was the last laugh, since they lost us at that point. Don’t you hate being treated like an idiot, or a child? We do. If *you* find any information on this site that does not talk to you like you have a brain in your head and a desire to improve your cash flow, please email us right away and we will correct it.
What else did we get from Market America?
Lots of wonderful products at our door!
No, we are not too proud too admit, like so many others, we actually paid for the privilege of buying and selling their products! Yes, it’s hard for us to believe, looking back on it now, that we actually gave our credit card number to Market America. We always hated the thought of bugging our friends to buy stuff!
Good thing the vitamins and moisturizer are top notch - because we sure have enough of them to last us a long, long time! The only product we didn’t care for, the shelf stable meals, were not bad as far as those products go, but we were out of ideas of what to select from the list of products when we had to meet our commitments. They won’t get wasted though; we put them in our earthquake kit!
What else did we get from Market America?
A lighter checkbook!
After we drank the Kool-aid we spent about $700 in start-up costs – I think it was for some enhanced level of getting started; it was all too artificially complicated for me to pay attention to that part… but I believe we were trying to add “inner and outer legs” faster and that seemed like the best way to get there.
But, the meter was running: every month was another $129.34 to buy the products required to keep our upstream manager’s downstream gleaming (say that five times fast) and another $25 per month in “web center” charges that we never got around to using because we had so many people seeking us out to build custom sites through our marketing agency and business services sites.
You know what is REALLY the most irritating part of this invoice that showed up every month? They had the audacity to charge a Handling Fee and an Admin Fee!
Finally we said, “What are we, nuts? We are spending over $150 a month and the only we have to show for it so far is vitamins, motivational CDs and hilarious emails.” So we decided we were lucky that we’d never told our personal network about getting into “the business” and we finally sent a letter to our “Up-Line Executive Coordinator” that we were now declining to send our money TO Market America and instead we were enjoying EARNING money. We did this working from home by building a wide variety of sites selling common products you see on many thousands of other sites from many manufacturers – but using our decades of experience as journalists, consumer product development experts and marketers to do it better than the average “link farms” you see out there.
What else did we get from Market America?
Unfortunately, we didn’t get invited to any parties!
And we sure didn’t feel like PAYING to be a lemming at the Pep Rallies that are a nice profit center for MA! But we would have LOVED to have seen Ridinger’s daughter wearing a $27,000 Dolce & Gabbana dress and singing on stage with Ashanti and JaRule; on her special day!
Check out the New York Times article we saw about Ridinger’s daughter 13th birthday party, where he was quoted as saying that their ability to book two pop stars for a party that would “Typically call for a kitschy cover band wearing ill-fitting tuxedos was a social achievement,” even in their big-money Miami social circles.
Well, I know I’m impressed! And all my Dad did for my 13th birthday was take me and my best girlfriends to the circus. I remember the cupcakes with my name on them that my mom smuggled in for us! Not as exciting as JaRule perhaps, but a fond memory nonetheless.
What else did we get from Market China? ― I mean Market Russia!
We learned that they don’t believe in the first amendment!
The Market America lawyers have told us we must “apologize to Market America and the Ridinger’s family” so here we go:
We are sorry, Market America, that your shareholder money was spent on high-priced lawyers attempting to scare small business owners into abandoning their rights to free speech, and hope that you have not been manipulated into spending time pursuing WIP (such a small player in the web sales market) by one of your distributors that was recently let go from our employ. The other MA reps that work hard for their money would not be happy that she is leveraging your expensive resources to grind her personal axe. As proud Americans, we know you fully understand the right to free speech, and that we are free to express our personal experiences in any way we choose.
We’re sorry, Ridinger Family! I’m not sure what your lawyers would like us to say! We’re sorry that no one had healthy enough boundaries to delay such a wonderfully "glamorous" event as this birthday party to be delayed in to something your daughter could look forward to as an adult; like a wedding, or a college graduation... high school graduation? Perhaps even turning 16?
But it looks like you had a lot of money to spend so it must be hard to resist such excess.
I guess that proves that what you read all over the “internet technology” is wrong!
- Corporate Narc: Market America Scam
- Ratbags.com: Multi-Level Marketing, Pyramid Schemes, Scams [...]
You CAN get rich with Market America!
SEC records show that MA president and CEO, J.R. Ridinger, and stock broker Gilbert Zwetsch agreed to pay $2 million in 1999 to settle allegations that they failed to disclose they were the owners of Market America while encouraging people to buy its stock in 1993 and 1994. As a result of the market demand fraudulently generated by Ridinger and Zwetsch, Market America's stock price increased six-fold by the end of the second day it traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board, according to an SEC lawsuit.
Ridinger and Zwetsch did not admit or deny the allegations. To settle the SEC case, Ridinger agreed to pay $404,694 in fines and interest and Zwetsch $1.6 million. Ridinger told Market America distributors the stock scandal was a misunderstanding, said Dave Larson, a full-time distributor and former printing company sales representative from Port Washington.
"J.R. Ridinger wanted to take the company public to give it legitimacy, and he had nothing to hide," Larson said.
Market America executives declined to comment on this story: Multilevel marketing attracting attention.
