Multilevel Marketing is not going away…yet
People seem to think MLMs have magically disappeared. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Docuseries, like LulaRich, as well as podcasts like The Dream and Life After MLM, have thrown a white, hot spotlight on the deceptive marketing practices utilized by multilevel marketing (MLM) organizations. These works have been incredibly effective in educating the public about MLM, leading many to believe that the traps of MLM are as well known as the recruiting schemes of Charles Manson.
Sadly, not everyone has gotten the message, and millions of people—mostly women—continue to be pulled into companies like doTerra, Young Living, and, yup, even Tupperware.
Multilevel Marketing: The Consumer Protection Challenge
I was delighted to be asked to speak at the annual MLM consumer protection conference in Washington, DC, where I got a chance to present work from Hoodwinked about the similarities between MLM and cults. This conference brings together policymakers, academics, and activists—an important recipe for social change.
Attendees understand that the work to highlight scammy marketing practices has to continue because even while we’ve heard about the successful lawsuits brought against leggings retailer LuLaRoe and supplement company Herbalife, it’s nowhere near enough to protect consumers.
LuLaRoe is still in business, and the $12 million Herbalife settlement is a drop in the bucket to a company that brings in more than $5 billion annually. More frustrating is the reality that the Herbalife case took 12 years to litigate!!!!
Today’s regulations are utterly ineffective in stopping deceptive marketing practices…and it’s the reason why these companies continue to thrive.
MLM is not going away, spawning new books like Jane Marie’s “Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans” and Emily Lynn Paulson’s “Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing, which criticize these companies’ practices.
Highlights of the conference include:
· Bonnie Patten (Executive Director, Truth in Advertising). If you don’t know about TINA.org, drop everything and go check it out. They dig into all kinds of deceptive marketing, including multilevel marketing. Much of their work is used by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to go after companies using illegal practices.
This page includes comprehensive information about income claims made by members of the Direct Selling Association (DSA), the trade association aligned with MLM. TINA found the 98% of the companies had used “atypical or unsubstantiated claims.”
· If you want to get a bit nerdy about this, here are links to some fascinating academic research presented at the conference:
The psychology of attraction to multi-level marketing – People interested in MLM are drawn to it because of extrinsic life goals, spiritual belief systems, and believing in intuitive thinking over rational thinking. (The same author also wrote “The Secret” to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation,” which might be of interest.)
Achieving motherhood: a qualitative analysis of MLM success stories online (Jessica Pearce, Feminist Media Studies) is an interesting study about how certain MLM link being a “perfect mother” to participating in selling skincare. (This article is not available online, but you can watch the video presentation (see note below).
Sociologists Gina Marie Longo and Frankie Mastrangelo demonstrated the links between MLM, disinformation, and QAnon in Downlining Disinformation: How MLM Distributors Use Gendered Strategies for Recruitment and Pastel QAnon Indoctrination. To learn more about the social impacts of digital technologies, check out the Digital Sociology Lab.
· Activists spoke about the harms done to them and to their communities. More importantly, they were inspirational in their resilience and provided a passionate call to action. I put some of their social media information here so you can follow their work.
Kat Garcia-Benson, RDN, CSSD, Social Media Activist
Julie Anderson, Social Media Activist
Kalika Kanitkar, Social Media Activist
Alanda Carter, Social Media Activist
Brandie Hadfield, Social Media Activist
MLM Exit, Social Media Activist
Megan Williams, Social Media Activist
Chris Shelton, Social Media Activist
The link for the conference is here. Check back in another month or so and the videos from the event will be posted.