Loose Lips–A National Sales Director Lets Slip: Mary Kay Cosmetics Is A Multi-Level-Marketing Company After All

“You can spend all day covering a turd in pink frosting and calling it a ‘cupcake.’
At the end of the day, though, it is really still just a turd.” — author unknown

What happens when a multi-level-marketing company like Mary Kay Cosmetics has its well-rehearsed mantra that Mary Kay is not a multi-level-marketing company exposed in a single sentence uttered (or typed, as the case may be) by one of its people at the top of the pink pyramid?

How much damage to its carefully-choreographed culture would an admission of the truth–that Mary Kay Cosmetics really is a multi-level-marketing company–do to Mary Kay’s deceptive “fake it ’til you make it” image?

Those may be questions being asked around some corporate meeting rooms in Texas right now, thanks to Mary Kay National Sales Director Gloria Mayfield Banks.

You see, anyone who has come within earshot of a Mary Kaybot trying to convince a target to join the pink pyramid has probably heard the insistence (or delusional denial) that Mary Kay Cosmetics is not a multi-level-marketing company but a “dual level” or “network marketing” company.

It’s taught by word of mouth ad nauseum, as well as found in documents, as is the case here:

Our marketing Plan (Selected the #1 Marketing Plan by Harvard School of Business)

1. Income is based on retail sales. 40-50% discount on wholesale purchase. Purchase for $1.00, sell for $2.00.
2. Considered “Dual” marketing, not multi-level or “pyramid.” … [Emphasis added.]

Despite the fact that both of the statements in bold above are false, the predators within Mary Kay Comsetics’ sales force continue repeating the fantasy to both their converts and themselves so often that it is accepted as truth.

Unfortunately, the Mary-Kay-is-not-multi-level-marketing mantra is repeated so often that those inside the pink pyramid scheme actually believe they are something other than a multi-level-marketing company.

• Related: The Mary Kay Harvard Hoax

Well, Gloria Mayfield Banks has now set the record straight when she inadvertently admitted on Facebook that, Mary Kay Cosmetics is, indeed, a multi-level-marketing company.

On Tuesday (Oct. 22), Banks used her Facebook page to get her multitude of minion followers to “like” the Facebook page of the Direct Selling Association (DSA).

The DSA is the trade association that represents multi-level-marketing companies, including Mary Kay Cosmetics, through lobbying and contributing to politicians.

Banks, on her Facebook page, announced that she was going to Washington for the DSA’s lobbying day to “represent Mary Kay on Capital [sic] Hill.”

In her announcement, Banks let slip that the DSA represents companies that primarily use “multi-level marketing compensation plans.”

Go like this page ( Direct Selling Association ) and then follow with me tomorrow as I represent Mary Kay on Capital Hill. Wow. The Direct Selling Association (DSA) is the name of several similar trade associations in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and New Zealand that represent direct selling companies, primarily those that use multi-level marketing compensation plans. On behalf of its members companies, the DSA engages in public relations and lobbying efforts against regulation of the multi-level marketing industry, and it funds political candidates through a political action committee. [Emphasis added.]

Now, despite the fact that Mary Kay’s marketing plan is not taught at Harvard, Gloria Mayfield Banks did attend Harvard University–a point which she and Mary Kaybots use in their recruiting tactics.

So, with someone as “successful” as Gloria Mayfield Banks going to Capitol Hill to represent Mary Kay Cosmetics, a company that uses a “multi-level marketing compensation” plan, perhaps its time to retire the myth that Mary Kay Cosmetics is anything but a multi-level-marketing company.

Related:

• CNBC: ‘Don’t Call Me a Multi-Level Marketer’
• Manipulative Mary Kay Predators vs. DSA’s Code of Ethics
• Pink Truth: Why Mary Kay Is Not “Dual Marketing”

Image via Facebook.