Hilariously sleazy 'network marketing' with Yoli

March 6, 2010 4:30 PM

Hilariously sleazy network marketing videos for Yoli. The "Yoli's Hybrid Comp Plan" video specifically is quite ridiculous, as are all the ones from the company founders. Yoli is a network marketing product, a health drink specifically, with some terribly creepy videos over-promising their get rich quick product to suckers worldwide.
posted by sp160n (43 comments total)

BOILED! OH NO!
posted by idiopath at 4:37 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I remember the blast cap. They were handing out Yoli samples after a race I did a few months ago, and made a big deal about it. This stuff is not good.
posted by Horselover Fat at 4:41 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hey, look -- something stupid on the internet!
posted by chasing at 4:44 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, maybe the spot was evil in general, but those kids were adorable.
posted by Joe Beese at 4:48 PM on March 6, 2010

Great Job!
posted by hellojed at 4:53 PM on March 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

what's wrong with drinks being pasteurized?
posted by clockworkjoe at 4:56 PM on March 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

Meh
posted by KokuRyu at 4:58 PM on March 6, 2010

That ad is TELLING THE TRUTH. Orange juice killed my parents.
posted by Consonants Without Vowels at 5:12 PM on March 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

I like how the kid complains about the juice being pasteurized.

Because E. coli = enjoying juice the way nature intended.
posted by Ouisch at 5:12 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I prefer this youtube video for a health drink.
posted by inigo2 at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I prefer this youtube video for a health drink.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:31 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the first can he pulls out of the fridge while yelling "SUGAR!?!?" is Diet Coke (look at how silver it is), but they switch it out before it ends up in the garbage.
posted by niles at 5:44 PM on March 6, 2010

This reeks like Amway.
posted by pinky at 5:47 PM on March 6, 2010

That first video was annoying as hell, but it's good to see Poochie getting some work.
posted by el_lupino at 5:47 PM on March 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

I prefer this youtube video for a health drink [video for Cookie Dough Sport removed by the bastards at NBC]
posted by ColdChef at 5:48 PM on March 6, 2010

Robby Fender reminds me of "We Got That B Roll" guy, but in ways that make me feel uncomfortable and squeamish...like I'm touching myself in public.
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:51 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

In other words, if I'm going to be touching something in public, PLEASE GOD let it only be a wall.
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:52 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I want to believe that David Foster Wallace is orchestrating this all for his own amusement, and the amusement of all of us who find things like this amusing when they don't find them utterly despairing.
posted by Evstar at 5:56 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Just last week, I had a guy (who was quitting the company that day) pitch Yoli to me. I told him about ditching my dentist because he pitched Amway to me, and he said, "Oh, this isn't Amway. Amway sucks."
posted by Jimmy Havok at 6:13 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

There's a paper in how these scam artists look a lot more legit because of advances in computers and home video editing software.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:40 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Beverages... a solution explains why you shouldn't drink pasteurization. Boy, canning sure is awful, eh? It's no wonder people are living shorter and shorter since that technology came out.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:44 PM on March 6, 2010

oh my god if we can somehow get them into a violent bloody conflict with the Monavie assh*les for sales turf then everybody wins
posted by bhance at 6:48 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Man, this just makes me feel sad, knowing all these people are so screwed. Especially the guy who called himself a "filmmaker." Also, I love how they demonize "shelf life" AKA "killing the pathogens that can kill you slowly and painfully."
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:50 PM on March 6, 2010

If yer gonna post a "look at this dumb thing on the Internet!" MeFi post, could you at least give us a little context? Then again researching this leads me to a deluge of depressing multilevel marketing sites full of things like "Yoli review: yes, it's awesome, sign up with me!". Hard to find something I'm not ashamed to link.

The principal of the company seems to be Corey Citron, whose many web properties scream "MLM douchebag". You may know him from such MLM beverages as Xango. The other founder seems to be Robby Fender.

What I'm most curious about is the lousy Wikipedia article currently claims Yoli was a Mexican soda made by Grupo Yoli and bought by Coca-Cola in 2008. Here's a photo. The logo branding is different but the color scheme is the same Brazilian flag colours. Is Coca-Cola experimenting with MLM? Or did the current hucksters buy it out from Coca-Cola, or are they ripping it off wholesale?
posted by Nelson at 6:50 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth!
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:58 PM on March 6, 2010

They keep calling it a "living drink," although it doesn't seem to be probiotic, as it's a freeze-dried powder. Can they legally do that? Can we get a lawyer up in here and sue their stupid MLM scheme? I mean, I do like the videos. They're exactly what Tim and Eric mock.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:01 PM on March 6, 2010

mccarty.tim > They keep calling it a "living drink," although it doesn't seem to be probiotic, as it's a freeze-dried powder.

Ever seen a vacuum-sealed brick of yeast?
posted by Decimask at 7:26 PM on March 6, 2010

Think they got permission to use the Black Eyed Peas song in the videos?
posted by Mick at 8:02 PM on March 6, 2010

Mick: I was wondering the same thing, I can only imagine the answer is no.
posted by sp160n at 8:28 PM on March 6, 2010

pinky This reeks like Amway.

Jimmy Havok Just last week, I had a guy (who was quitting the company that day) pitch Yoli to me. I told him about ditching my dentist because he pitched Amway to me, and he said, "Oh, this isn't Amway. Amway sucks."

I don't see why Amway should be the boogieman of MLM. They're one of the first, and probably the biggest, but they're immensely more ethical and responsible than the proliferation of bottom-feeding scam-artists that the public think of as "like Amway". If nothing else, Amway is big enough to be subject to regulatory oversight.

I've signed up to it a couple of times, but never stayed in it, because Amway has three problems that I personally find to be intolerable:
(1) Amway is thoroughly infested with Republicans and tainted by Republican-ism. The highest-level network leadership are almost exclusively associated with the Repugs, the De Voses and Van Andels are Repug fundraisers, high-level party executive, and have run as Repug politicians. This is especially ironic when the philosophy of the MLM plan is considered: X cannot prosper unless X helps Y and Z, his downline, to build downlines of their own. Any Amway direct (or whatever they call it these days) I've ever personally met has gotten there by spending many hours a week for months and years at a stretch helping his downline sign up people. If you're in Amway, you're feeding dollars into the Maw of Rush Limbaugh, and he and those he serves will take that money and use it to destroy the minds and bodies and future prospects of you and everyone you care about.

(2) "Tools." Optimal behavior within the system is altruistic, at least until the point is reached where one can get in on the "tools" (ie tapes, CDs, books etc) scam. It's particularly telling that they don't give away MP3 and PDF copies of these; if they were sincere about the tools being "the key to building a huge business", and bearing in mind that the bigger ones' downlines' businesses the bigger one's own, and also bearing in mind that distribution costs of MP3s and PDFs are near-zero, the logical strategy is to give 'em all away, en masse. But they don't, because the real money is in the tapes, books, and functions. Your downline do not have to be successful for you to make money out of those; they merely need to show up and pay. Any Amway distributor accumulates a massive pile of redundant tools, and there has been no need for that to be the case for at least fifteen years. It's Dexter Yager's great big scam-within-a-scam.

(3) Crap value. The distribution system is fair enough and Amway were doing what amounted to operating an online shopping site ten years before Amazon. But it's always been shitty, shitty value. If you pay $5 for something through Amway it's just about guaranteed that the supermarket will have it, or something indistinguishable from it, for $3. Now if you're consistently at 15% or higher it's not too bad as you're getting your commission and your downline's commission to offset against product costs, but you're working multiple hours a week for that discount. You'd do better shelf-stacking for pay and employee discount, if saving shopping money was your only concern. Also, for anything you might actually want, there's a pretty good chance they won't be in it at all. Product variety is tiny; it's one step up from the discount bin. The irony of this third problem is that it actually isn't a problem if only Amway were just a bit less greedy: they swing an annual turnover comparable to large supermarket chains, have a distributorship force comparable to the staff complement of large supermarket chains, and ought to be able to use those facts to get actual real value for their distributors and customers, at which point, reasonably enough, the public would be clamoring to sign up. But they don't.

Also, it's not intolerable, but it's bloody irritating: Amway is full of hyperenthusiastic, uncritical, magical-thinking (and usually Christian), intellectually shallow-as-a-piss-puddle, chucklenuts. I can barely stand those people. Having to be deeply involved with them on a day-to-day basis for years ... no. Just no.

In summary though, even considering every single one of those accusations, Amway distributors and Amway corporate activities are a hundred times more ethical and better at what they do than the MLM bottom-feeders who produce stuff like this crap in the link. Amway will honor warranties, for example. Their products are at least as subject to semi-independent testing as, say, products sold by Woolworths. They will discipline, and even eject, distributors (well, distributors smaller than, say, Diamond or so) who engage in illegal behavior. They're bad people, and a bad company, but they're not horrible. I'd consider their corporate ethics to be better than those of Walmart.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 8:53 PM on March 6, 2010 [8 favorites]

Here's something moderately interesting and completely detachable from aggressively enthusiastic network marketers...

...a nifty eye-candy goal-setting game/app called Mindbloom

Click on the blue "a quick tour" for the video. (I found mindbloom by googling the "yolilife" thing I saw in the video on the yoli site.)
posted by Moistener at 11:21 PM on March 6, 2010

I'd consider their corporate ethics to be better than those of Walmart.

Really? At the end of the day, are the bottom-tier MLM suckers making money then? And more, or less, than they would stocking shelves? Compare the opportunity costs to another job, or to real entrepreneurship.

You speak of high-tier MLM bastards 'helping their downline' but isn't this fundamentally the same as saying 'salesmen sell stuff'? If I recruit someone into MLM, I may mask this as compassionate behavior, or I'll even rationalize it in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance between 'I'm making money off this bozo' and 'I'm helping Joe make money for himself'. But if most Joes have to shell out money for training materials, and if Joe is stuck peddling crap-quality widgets, and if Joe has to sucker sub-Joes and sub-sub-Joes into MLM in order to get by, than this doesn't seem like ethical behavior, even if it is legal. It's like saying 'This casino has cheap drinks, food, and rooms, and a nice floor show', and chalking it up to corporate ethics rather than to barracuda-like business instincts.

Frankly, I'm not surprised that
1) High tier MLM bastards are selfish when it comes to spending money to help folk out.
2) You have to buy and sell rip-off "Tools'.
3) The merchandise quality is crap.
4) The Joes in the system are enthusiastic and foolish.
These are not odd features, these are a system of evolved and designed functions that maximize effectiveness and screwing over people.

Amway should be the boogieman of MLM, as it continues to exist, and while it does so, it inexorably extracts wealth from innocents while doing fuck-all to help them.

Go read the wikipedia article for Mondragon Corporation if you're looking for a system that generates wealth, gives good value, and helps people.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:35 AM on March 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Think they got permission to use the Black Eyed Peas song in the videos?

And if not it's even worse that they've used it for a marketing/promotional video.
posted by ericb at 4:01 AM on March 7, 2010

This beverage should have been a paid placement in Microsoft's Windows 7 Launch Party video.
posted by ericb at 4:04 AM on March 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

You may know him from such MLM beverages as Xango.

From that link:

"Dr. Ralph Moss, author of several books and newsletters on cancer research, has said of mangosteen juice:

"In my opinion, what we have here is simply an overpriced fruit drink. Fruit drinks are often healthful beverages. But the only reason I can see that the promoters of mangosteen can get away with charging $37 for this product is that they are playing on patients' hopes and fears in a cynical way. Without the health claims, open or implied, the product could only be sold for at most $5 or $6 (which, for example, is the cost of antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice)."

$37? For one drink? Really?
posted by ericb at 4:19 AM on March 7, 2010

I don't see why Amway should be the boogieman of MLM.

I take your point that Amway is in some ways less evil than the real sleazeballs of MLM. But Amway is also awfully destructive and sleazy. A good friend of mine's parents-in-law went broke trying to keep up with their position on the bottom of Amway. Leveraging social contacts to pressure people into buying products they don't need nor can resell is evil. Doubly so when it's your church contacts.

Speaking of churches, both Xango and Yoli are from Sandy, Utah, deep in Mormon country. Full of friendly people who trust their neighbours and want to help them, who value their friendships. I can't think of a better part of America to exploit with an MLM scam.
posted by Nelson at 8:06 AM on March 7, 2010

Amway should be the boogieman of MLM because Amway was fucking scum back in the day, and the bigwigs of Amway are fucking scum every day of the week.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:20 AM on March 7, 2010

Oops. I meant to cancel that. Ah, well, cat is out of the bag now.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:21 AM on March 7, 2010

What I'm most curious about is the lousy Wikipedia article currently claims Yoli was a Mexican soda made by Grupo Yoli and bought by Coca-Cola in 2008. Here's a photo. The logo branding is different but the color scheme is the same Brazilian flag colours. Is Coca-Cola experimenting with MLM? Or did the current hucksters buy it out from Coca-Cola, or are they ripping it off wholesale?

I've had Yoli (the Mexican pop) many times - it was/is huge in Acapulco. That Yoli is similar to 7Up or Sprite and is most definitely not an MLM product - it's available in supermarkets and restaurants and anywhere else you'd buy pop.

I'm going for the wholesale ripoff of the name for MLM Yoli.
posted by SisterHavana at 12:33 PM on March 7, 2010

I've never done a trademark search before, so I could totally misunderstand what I'm seeing here. But the only live trademark I can find for Yoli is the sleazy MLM product. There's a few trademarks in the database for the Mexican soda, but they're all marked abandoned as of about 2007.
posted by Nelson at 1:23 PM on March 7, 2010

aeschenkarnos, I favorited your comment because it nicely encapsulates the problems with Amway, but saying that they're still better than the real bottom-feeders is no more relevant than saying that they're better than muggers or the home-repair scam artists that prey on senior citizens. I've had close relatives get caught up in the excitement of "owning their own business" and been torn between wanting to tell them to get out before they wasted any more money and time on it and not wanting to kill their dreams, and when I was 18 I had someone try to sign me up as a distributor after I'd mown their lawn, making me wait for my $20 while I sat through their spiel, so, you know, fuck Amway.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:33 AM on March 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

Also, pasteurization /= "boiling" as the videos claim.

Even HTST (high temp short time) pasteurization only reaches a temp of 165 F.

Also, cutting the fruit and other forms of the processing actually destroys more vitamins than the pasteurization itself.
posted by Ouisch at 10:09 AM on March 8, 2010

Halloween Jack saying that they're still better than the real bottom-feeders is no more relevant than saying that they're better than muggers or the home-repair scam artists that prey on senior citizens

Yeah ... maybe. Given a fair trial, Amway is guilty of a hell of a lot; but so are most corporations and the people who work for them, if given the same fair trial. I don't think the Amway Dream of "work hard and maybe you'll make it, oh look you didn't make it therefore you didn't work hard enough" is any worse than the generic American Dream which tells the same lie. You still have a caste system, you just don't get a clear view of which caste you were until you die.

It reminds me of the Internet's War on Scientology: yes, the defendants are guilty. But surrounding the defendants, uncharged, and in many cases pointing the finger at the defendants and chanting "hang them", are a large number of other entities that if tried under the same rules, would be found just as guilty if not more so. Business makes villains of ordinary men.

I'm not sure MLM can be done ethically at all without some mechanism for requiring continued activity to maintain higher rank in the system, which contravenes one of the major selling points of the system (ie, rent-seeking, the pursuit of "passive income"). But the same applies to mainstream corporate or government bureaucratic heirarchial rank.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 1:48 PM on March 8, 2010