Here's something more to validate the "No promises. No Problems" approach we've been hammering on in this blog. See also "I know who's giving us the bad rap"
The New York Times headlines this today (PDF here in case):
Why Short Sellers Want to Crash the Tupperware Party
Here's from the piece:
"When the Federal Trade Commission proposed new rules this spring for multilevel marketers — businesses best known for commercials that promise riches selling herbal supplements and beauty supplies — it drew howls of protest. Tupperware party-givers, diet pill vendors and knife salesmen sent the agency more than 15,000 letters complaining that the proposed rules would undo a $30-billion-a-year industry."
The article reports that short stock sellers are now an ally with the FTC – the short sellers are "betting that the stocks of multilevel marketing companies will decline when the new rules, which have received little public attention, go into effect." (They have not yet – KK.)
The new rules "would require companies to tell potential recruits how many sales representatives have failed to earn more than their start-up costs…"
"If companies have to tell recruits that the average income is only $1,400 instead of the $50,000 advertised on their Web site, or that the average salesman only lasts two months, a lot fewer people are going to sign up," said Mimi Sokolowski, an analyst with Sidoti & Company who follows Tupperware Brands, Nu Skin Enterprises and other publicly traded multilevel marketing companies."
She ads – "if the proposed rules pass without modification, recruitment in the United States could fall by as much as 40 percent." (Chances are good the rules will be modified a bit – KK.)
The story uses Pre-Paid Legal as an example of short seller enthusiasm (although they mention Avon, Tupperware, NuSkin, Herbalife, Mannatech, USANA Health Sciences and Medifast.)
"Under the rules, Pre-Paid Legal would have to tell prospects that fewer than a quarter of its sales representatives sold more than one insurance plan in 2005, something it disclosed to investors in a filing with the S.E.C. While Pre-Paid's Web site tells prospects that if they "market just five memberships per week, you'll receive $500 per week!" very few representatives have consistently sold five memberships a week."
Promises are killing our business. Because they aren't true. It is NOT easy to make money doing this or any other business of one's own. Plus we don't know for sure how a product will affect someone else, do we?
We don't need the promises. Stories of what happened for you or others? Yes. Dreams? Yes. Promises? No.
There are ways to excite people about the business AND the products you love without ever making a promise about what they'll do for someone else. Check out If my product's so Great, how come I can't Sell It? or the So You Want to Be a Networker? CD program.
Or come with us to Network Marketing Central (http://networkmarketingcentral.com ) where people hang out who strive NOT to make promises they can't keep – and still excite others about the possibilities.
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Scm review
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You have a child with their own computer, this child is not the ISP account holder a webwise page pops up this child spots the name webwise and associates this with the BBC program he uses at school so clicks to allow. This child has just been allowed to alter the T&C of the ISP account while under the age of being allowed to give informed consent, The ISP now is profiling a minor without parental consent, changed the customers T&C without his verifiaction. Would this fall into invaision of privacy since the person consenting was mislead by false advertising yes Phorm selected an alreadyb known and trusted name by children used by the BBC. 1. Would this be breaking the law? 2. Why does the account holder have to verify wioth password to login or even talk to the ISP about anything but a child can change the T&C without any way to verify it is the account holder? 3. Interception of the browser is illegal so how can Phorm suceed without breaking the law? 4.Websites you visit all have copyright you can visit but are not supposed to copy, proccess for material gain this phorm will do who wil pay the website owners for breaching their copyright? 5. Why will phorm not follow the robots.txt for its own instead of googles? 6. With such as google I can delete cookies and any tracking they are doing is stopped, with phorm it is on my connection so can never turn it off 100% have tot ake the word of one person who has no reputation since he has been hijaking browsers illegally for years would you trust this knowing that?
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you seem to be confident that these changes are only taking place on a corporate side. I fear that this assumption could be a little shortsighted. How do you propose that advertisers can counteract the rise in public awareness of advertising technologies which were previously operated "under the covers". After all how many people are prepared to stop and talk to marketing or PR enquiries on the high street? when people are given the option they invariably decide to opt-out.How can the "marketing intelligence industry" tackle this rise in "public awareness"?
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