Will Donald Trump Regret Linkage Of Name To MLM?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was prompted by a post we saw on Scam.com. The “lede” is deliberately buried in this article in favor of some background information.
During the 1990s, I was sitting at home one evening just minding my own business. Back in those days I routinely had staggered newspaper deadlines beginning at 7 p.m. and lasting perhaps through 9 p.m. I often covered an event for more than one publication. I was tasked with the duty to write unique stories for each publisher from the same fact set.
If I’d spent the day covering a murder trial, for example, I could not submit duplicate stories to the publishers. They wanted individual stories tailored to their readership — stories that required me to present the information in the in-house styles of the publications. One of my key responsibilities was to write different “ledes” for the stories, an opening sentence or paragraph unique to the audiences and designed to grab readers’ attention and not let go.
Getting it right the first time — which is to say, “grabbing” readers, including all the key facts and adopting the “voice” of the newspapers throughout the story — was my responsbility. Not doing it meant I’d spend the evening fielding calls from editors to fill in details, instead of enjoying the time with my girlfriend. She didn’t like it when editors called and perhaps disrupted the movie we were watching.
I didn’t like it, either. So, I worked hard to ensure I’d lighten the work load on my editors, while lightening the load on myself and freeing up time to kick back.
Editors, though, were not the only ones who called — and this brings us back to something that happened one night when I was just kicking back at home after finishing my work day.
People occasionally would call me with news tips from the mundane to the incendiary and all places in between. On this particular evening I got a call on what I’d initially thought might be one of those “in between” things, but it was worth checking out immediately because the unemployed woman who called me was really worked up.
I agreed to meet her in a hotel lobby to listen to her story. I soon discovered she wasn’t the only person worked up in the lobby of this hotel, which was situated in a county experiencing high joblessness and economic decay because manufacturing had gone into the tank locally.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Some of the most forlorn-looking people you’d ever want to see quickly told me they’d been duped into attending a job “interview” by a prospective employer that had placed an ad and created the expectation it would hire workers for jobs that paid $30 an hour.
Naturally the employer had no trouble filling the room in a town experiencing hardship.
Before long, though, the event turned into a grimace-fest. Attendees thought the advertiser was recruiting them to work at a hospital after they received training in an emerging science that had something to do with making sure healthcare ecosystems were maintained.
In reality, it was a pitch for an MLM of some sort that apparently specialized in sucking dust from the atmosphere of homes across America to keep the owners safe from microscopic allergens and pathogens that silently were killing them.
Yes, the promoter had come to the struggling town to try to recruit a team of vacuum-cleaner salespeople. The sky was the limit.
Except it wasn’t.
The attendees told the promoter it wasn’t — in no uncertain terms. Later I covered a similar incident involving hearing aids at the same hotel. The key, from the promoters’ perspective, was to draw a crowd by using words to trigger emotions and plant a false idea, and then try to sell the desperate few who remained on the dream of MLM riches.
Need and greed. Marry the two — and return in your fancy car to your fashionable home in time to set sail in your fancy boat. When you need to replenish cash, take out another ad to sell a vacuum cleaner by calling it an ecology system. Replace the money you spent on cocktails and martinis and restocking the bar on your boat, and then head back to your fashionable home in your fancy car to set sail again on your fancy boat.
And this brings us to Donald Trump, whom MLMers say has lent his name to a business opportunity.
Someone posted about it on Scam.com, pointing out that MLM purveyors were pushing it on craigslist by referring to Trump as a “Billionaire, Real Estate Developer from NYC” who is “Opening a New Metabolic Testing Company” near Atlanta.
Let’s hope the “Metabolic Testing Company” being pitched on craigslist in Atlanta by referencing Trump without mentioning his name is not the equivalent of the ecologically pleasing vacuum cleaner pitched to people who thought they were going to get an exciting, new career in the healthcare field in America’s Rust Belt.
I’m not hopeful: The craigslist ad suggests compensation of “$30 to $50 per hour.”
The post at scam.com appears not to link to a working craigslist URL. Here is the the link I believe to be correct.
Sorry about burying the “lede.”
Unfortunately, the poster that affirmed that it was indeed Trump while having no fact to back it up, has been proven wrong and misleading on many occasion there.
Hi Wlip,
The Scam.com thread appears to have been deleted.
Regardless, at the moment there are all sorts of recent references to Trump and MLM, including references to Atlanta promotions.
There is a YouTube video in which Trump talks about the Trump Network:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxAyxqJcGCc&feature=player_embedded
It is evident from search results that promoters are seizing on Trump’s name in an MLM context.
Here is a craiglist reference from the UK:
http://london.craigslist.co.uk/hab/1417358052.html
The London craiglist posting seems to be tied to this Trump Network product:
http://www.trumpnetwork.com/Products/PrivaTest.aspx
The Trump Network promoters cite a company called Ideal Health and a recent promotion in Atlanta:
http://catchthewave.eventbrite.com/
Ideal Health is headquartered in Massachusetts, according to its website. The name of its PrivaTest product matches the name of the product the Trump Network is promoting, and some websites have described the Trump/Ideal health tie as a rebranding effort.
In promoting an Atlanta event, one person used the acronym POOR, which stands for “Past Overworked Opportunity Resisters.”
http://www.ournewfinancialfreedom.com/trump-network-pre-launch-atlanta-meeting/
So, Trump’s name now is associated with the acronym POOR and also MLM.
And if people are promoting the opportunity as though signing up creates a $50-an-hour-job — and it’s not true — it won’t be long before some regulatory agency acts to tone it down.
Regards,
Patrick
Patrick, and our mutual friend, Bob Guenther, is now on the Trump Network bandwagon, which in itself would sour one against joining it, even if it were the goldmine he says it will be. He has about the same record of a “brilliant business acumen” as does Andy Bowdoin.
I don’t know if you understood my point Patrick, as it appeared to me that you believed that the ad referenced in the thread was indeed posted by/about Trump and was ‘proven’ to be ‘him/them’ by a posting from an intentionally misleading individual when nothing concrete had been offerd as evidence. I think you know better than that considering all the scams portrayed on the ‘list’. This may be why the trolling thread was removed.
Hi Whip,
I think the OP at Scam.com raised an interesting point. I concede that there could have been trolling going on that occurred later and led to the deletion of the post.
My point — and it’s my fault if I did not make it clear — is that the ad in Atlanta’s craigslist reminded me of ads I’ve seen that promote MLMs as “jobs” that pay a certain amount per hour.
When people arrive at meetings, only then are they told that the “job” is an MLM and that the earnings figure cited is an estimate of some sort.
Personally the Atlanta ad’s reference to a “Billionaire, Real Estate Developer from NYC†who is “Opening a New Metabolic Testing Company†near Atlanta struck me as a clear reference to Trump, even though the ad did not mention his name.
The ad impressed me as particularly strange in that the reference to Trump was veiled.
If someone later came into Scam.com and started trolling, I didn’t see it. I did see a post from someone who said it definitely was Trump, but I didn’t interpret the post as accusing Trump of posting the ad or a Trump employee posting the ad on behalf of the company.
Rather, I read the Scam.com post as coming from a person who believed the Atlanta ad definitely referenced Trump without mentioning his name or the name of the Trump Network.
There could have been some bad info in that thread, but I did not see it when I was there.
In any event, that’s my take.
Regards,
Patrick
P.S. In the hearing-aid case I referenced above, the company that took out that ad didn’t even bother to rent a room to present the job “opportunity.” It simply started holding court in the hotel lobby as information-seekers arrived, which impressed neither the new recruitment class nor the hotel manager.
No one left happy that night, including the pitchman.
Trump is in the MLM business. Question is he actually the owner of just a figure head and selling the branding of his name? He has purchased a failing company and is giving it rebirth. Is it a scam not legally. Personally, I think it is less than ethical and built on greed and ego. I say that having read the Policies & Procedures for the company, which is the contract for the distributors. It say in them that one is not allowed in anyway to contact The Donald or anyone in the Trump Organization as they are completely separate from the Trump Network. It also says that the company has the right to terminate one or all distributor contracts with 30 day notice and for no reason. That is the major item but the whole document is set up with 13 ways from Tuesday to take away money from its distributors. This to me is a LOUD statement as to the lack of integrity as well as the greed and ego of the companies leadership. I also cannot help but wonder if the FDA will take issue with them as they are collecting DNA to prescribe (their term) designer vitamins and the such for their customers. Seems to me that to prescribe requires FDA approval and let us not forget that they FDA has gone after Cheerios for saying that they can reduce cholesterol in 6 six weeks on their labels, even thought there is clinical studies to back that claim up as claims of that nature are not allowed to be used in advertising. I also have an issue with providing my DNA for their database and it amazes me that many don’t! Last but not least The Donald does nothing without getting a high return on investment and the P&P’s are set up to do just that and if it’s not high enough they can take away what the distributors have build by terminating their contract. Oh yeah termination of contract does not include termination of monthly auto-ship that is required when a distributor! Imagine that. There are numerous other points in the P&P’s that overall make joining into business with Trump Network not worth the effort it takes to build an organization it is at minimum as game of high risk that is for sure!