Marketing schemes can hurt friendships

Sales tactics based on relationships make people feel duped.

Jamie Birdwell-Branson had just moved to Toledo, when an old high school friend reached out on Facebook and asked to meet for breakfast so they could catch up. “She was so interested in meeting up that she agreed to meet up halfway between our two cities — which was about an hour’s drive for each of us,” Birdwell-Branson said. “I was so eager for friendship that I immediately agreed, even though I hadn’t seen her in years.”

Halfway through brunch, the other woman revealed that she was less focused on friendship and more focused on recruiting Birdwell-Branson to sell skin-care products. “It was nothing but a marketing ploy for Arbonne,” she said. “She had zero interest in what was going on in my life and had no intention of forming or reconnecting a friendship.” She added, “Needless to say, we haven’t talked since.”

Over the past few years, many of us have witnessed our social media feeds morph from kid and pet photos into endless posts by friends peddling everything under the sun: makeup, skin care, candles, essential oils, hormone gel patches, leggings, tote bags, juice powders, nontoxic cleaning products, whitening toothpaste, vitamins, nail decals, nutritional shakes and gardening towers.

Women and multilevel marketing (MLM) companies have gone together since Tupperware and Mary Kay were introduced in the middle of the 20th century as a way for housewives to make money from home and get products to women in rural areas. While some women find success in these endeavors, they are the exceptions: According to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report, less than 1 percent of MLM participants will profit, a far worse rate than for “legitimate small businesses,” of which 39 percent are profitable over the lifetime of the business. “MLM makes even gambling look like a safe bet in comparison,” the report states.

The FTC closely monitors MLM companies and cautions that the compensation structure, which incentivizes participants to recruit additional participants, “poses particular risks of injury.” While the financial risks of getting involved with an MLM are well-documented, the personal ones are harder to quantify but are just as real. Namely: You could end up alienating every Facebook friend you ever had.

The pressure to sell and recruit has led to underhanded tactics that strain, fracture and sometimes end friendships and family relationships. Is dinner with an old college roommate just about getting caught up on the past decade or is something else afoot? Increasingly, it’s the latter, and it leaves women on the receiving end feeling duped, angry and not sure how to respond.

The structure of MLMs is to blame for many of those “Let’s catch up!” Facebook messages piling up in your inbox. The more recruits or team members your friend pulls in, the more money she makes. It’s what the MLM industry calls “building a downline,” which is lingo for bringing in another recruit as part of your team who sells under you, while you act as their “upline” and take a cut of their sales. The less pretty term for this is a pyramid scheme. It’s also a pretty good way to infuriate your social network.

Back in our moms’ era, attendees knew from the outset what they were in for when invited to a Tupperware party. Today, some are upfront about their MLM involvement, but not always.

“I thought I had made a genuine connection with a mom I met online in a mom group,” said Erin Heger of Kansas. After Heger declined this mom’s offer to become a Beachbody coach, the woman stopped talking to her. “It really hurt,” Heger said. “I even invited her and her kiddo to my son’s first birthday party. I felt like an idiot for thinking we were actually friends.”

Some of those tactics include using email lists that are normally off limits for solicitations to send invitation blasts to parties, in hopes of making a sale or gaining a recruit under the guise of a get-together. Elline Lipkin from California said that her child’s school class list was used to dupe parents into an MLM-focused party, something other parents who might have professional services to offer do not do.

Grace Alexander of Georgia had a colleague reach out to her because she knew Alexander was a chef, a diabetic and had a background helping design meal plans for diabetic residents at an assisted living center. This colleague asked Alexander for help creating a diet for herself to help her blood sugars stay level and asked if keto diets were any good. The conversation soon took a turn. “Of course, then she sent me this scammy keto shake hard-sell MLM message, and I was so disgusted,” Alexander said. “I unfollowed her on social media and stopped responding to her ‘waves’ and DMs. I felt completely disrespected and insulted by her pretending to want my educated opinion on something I am quasi-expert in. Discovering it was all a front to sell me some ridiculous get-skinnyfast product was just the last straw for me.”

Why would any woman engage in such tactics? According to the Direct Selling Association, the national trade organization for companies that market products and services directly to consumers through an independent sales force, 18.6 million Americans are involved in direct sales, and a staggering 74 percent are women.

These women are not setting out to annoy their friends. Many women want and need flexible work options because of family or other responsibilities, but it’s challenging to find a standard job that fits within school hours or a specific set schedule, especially if you’ve been out of the workforce a few years to care for a child or relative. MLMs exploits so many of the fault lines around women and the economy — women remain underpaid in the workplace and undervalued as stayat-home mothers. MLMs promise instant entrepreneurship success, camaraderie with other women in a “team” environment, and a career identity, trappings that standard jobs typically require years to build and develop.