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Multi-level-Marketing(MLM) or simply known as pyramid schemes are companies pledging people as ambassadors to promote products & recruit a chain of people under the ambassador’s wing to further the cause. Imagine a pyramid with business at the peak & chain of people tied to it.
Every element of the chain makes money off every attached element’s sale. Lucrative?
Tupperware Brands built its business on MLM by engaging suburban housewives to promote & sell their products. It was brilliant at the time, no one else was practically doing this.
It was all good until it wasn’t.
The social media boom brought the wave of MLM online. People started recruiting by false promises of grandiose to netizens vulnerable to “get rich quick schemes”.
In my honest opinion, MLM is no different than content creators selling stuff they don’t even use. The major difference is MLM is B2B whereas the latter is B2C.
Tik-Tok has banned MLM which plays very much in the platform’s favour:
- Tik-Tok is home to a younger audience and they might be susceptible to such grandiose false promises. The move prevents that from happening, hence protecting the platform in the longer run.
- The value proposition of Tik-Tok is entertaining in 15 seconds. The platform is already getting crowded with content creators advertising brands, they are trying to avoid becoming the next Facebook.
In my honest opinion, content creators on social platforms might need to start creating meaningful relationships with their audience since advertising stuff they don’t use might not work for that long!