DiscussMormonism.com

Most of you are probably familiar with the marketing strategy known as "HeartSell," from Bonneville International, owned by the LDS Church. I have a reference to this in my Examining Church Claims document:

“Our unique strength is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of our audiences, evoking
first feeling, then thought and, finally, action. We call this uniquely powerful brand of
creative "HeartSell"® - strategic emotional advertising that stimulates response.

The link I had went to the Bonneville website, showing this quote in all its glory. The page that now shows up from that original link is now completely generic, with no mention of HeartSell. I did a search on that new page for HeartSell, and it showed no results.

The original page has been captured, though:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150219201 ... om/?nid=32

Yet another example of the typical cowardly behavior of the LDS Church and its subsidiaries. With documents such as mine, the CES Letter, and many, many others, showing this for the emotional manipulation that it is, they just quietly remove mention of it, and move on. Sad, so very sad...

I wouldn't call its removal "cowardly". Someone probably realized the concept was ill-advised (especially in light of Bonneville's relationship to the LDS Church), so they got rid of it.

The idea of advertisers tugging the heart strings to sell products isn't new. It's just awkward to have a Church media company promoting it (at the same time they are promoting their religion based on how it makes people feel).

cinepro wrote:I wouldn't call its removal "cowardly". Someone probably realized the concept was ill-advised (especially in light of Bonneville's relationship to the LDS Church), so they got rid of it.

The idea of advertisers tugging the heart strings to sell products isn't new. It's just awkward to have a Church media company promoting it (at the same time they are promoting their religion based on how it makes people feel).

Well perhaps 'cowardly' is a little strong, but it's just so frustrating. They used this term for years, and now it's suddenly gone.

I do have to be fair, though, and state that I have no way to know their reason for this change. But given the way the Church simply changes their narrative to whatever is currently useful, never acknowledging what went before, this would be consistent with their M.O.

Finally, I did not find this myself - a Redditor on the exmormon subreddit found it, and I'm just posting here because I think it is significant.

So, in what way was the "HeartSell" model bad enough that the church decided to drop it?

Dr. Shades wrote:So, in what way was the "HeartSell" model bad enough that the church decided to drop it?

I think it is not an issue of being bad enough. It is rather, too close to the missionary commitment pattern to be disclosed as a corporate strategy.

They may have removed the brand name "Heartsell" but they will still be peddling the heart sell technique. They may call it something generic like 'testimony bearing marketing' or 'General Conferencing'.

Exactly. If a member came across the HeartSell description, it would be all to easy for them to realize that this technique can be used to "sell" anything - whether it is a commercial product, or the 'truthfulness' of the Church. They might then recognize how their emotions are being manipulated, in order to convince them that the Church is true.

As 'I have a question' points out, the missionary pitch will be exactly the same, and completely consistent with the HeartSell approach, regardless of what they do or don't call it.

Dr. Shades wrote:So, in what way was the "HeartSell" model bad enough that the church decided to drop it?

HeartSell is basically the missionary message distilled to a method that can sell vacuum cleaners.

by the way, our missionaries would be wildly successful if the were pedaling Dyson Vacuum Cleaners. When you have a product that lives up to its claims, a sales force ready and willing to bear their testimony about it would clean up.

The missionary program is really nothing more than a 2 year/18 month high pressure sales training course. If the amount of MLMs located in Utah County is any indicator, the training has been very successful.