Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The longest corporate legal battle

... or so it seems.

I am no fan of direct selling or multi-tier marketing (examples: Amway, Mary Kay). I don't like the aggressive selling or recruitment of customers to be salespeople, with the benefits accruing to those above them. Moreover, I don't like how many of these companies often conflate religion with selling a product.



Probably the most egregious example to conflate religion with selling products was the rumours spread by Amway distributors to tie Procter & Gamble to satanic worship because of P & G's (former) use of a logo featuring a man in the moon and 13 stars. I suspect that the distributors thought that this would play well among conservative Christian customers. For more background, see Logo controversy on Wikipedia. I regarded this effort to be defamation of P & G.

Now Amway is challenging the decision that they pay P & G nearly $20 million in legal expenses:
Amway claims P&G Satanic damages to be improper

1 comment:

IBOFB said...

Hiya,
It's not Amway challenging, and it wasn't Amway that was sued - it was 4 Amway distributors.

I agree with you about not liking the way some folk mix religion with business and aggressively sell and recruit. I'm not a fan of that either.

And I'm an Amway IBO. Not everyone operates like that though, it's unprofessional and has damaged our brand. Fortunately the corporation is (finally) taken solid steps to address it. Promoting religious and political viewpoints in conjunction with your business is for example against the rules, and if you want to be an "accredited" organization with Quixtar (amway in the US) you have to agree to being monitored on these kinds of issues. It will take years to undo the damage of the zealots though.

Get the Facts - The Truth About Amway and Quixtar