A friend was asking about how the church is a marketing company and the product it is selling is religion. I agreed with him and said it is that is why they trademarked the term HeartSell.

Back when I was studying the things the church does you could type 'Heartsell' into google and bonneville communications (a church owned for profit company) would pop up at the top of the list with the page that included the term. (a sales brochure of what it does.) there was lots of talk about it on blogs that were critical of the church as well at the time about 6 months ago.

Well I guess that the church monitors those blogs because they altered their search foot print to change how google looked for it. knowing a bit about internet search algorithms (Google invited me out to their company for other work stuff I did about a year ago,) doing this type of alteration is no simple task you need to be deliberate and methodical. there are in fact search engine alteration companies you can hire to do this type of manipulation of searching. you have to be a well capitalized company to afford it though, just like you have to be well capitalized to by commercials on TV. but spend enough money and time and you can dissociate specific word from you. Most companies want a trademarked brand to be associated with them why else would you trade mark a term. think about it. so this was an odd effort to do the opposite.

Now why do I point this out. simple, people point out things that the church does that are not consistent with the type of organization it professes to be. In this case they pointed out the church has a marketing arm using the term HeartSell, when you read about it you wonder, am I just being 'sold' a religion, not being converted by one? Then the church reacts to this critique by making the information hard to find, and the simple search you used to be able to do no longer works. Luckily though a savvy internet searcher knows that if the information is there there are other ways to find it. Now I know I have mentioned this HeartSell and googling it to many of the people that I communicated with as I left the church, and if they look for it now the way I had told them to you can't find it and you would think I was crazy to just passing on lies which is what the corporation wants you to think about an apostate.

I suggest you go read about HeartSell today via this link, because who knows how long it will be this easy to look at.

http://www.bonneville.com/?sid=582&nid=32

It was slick with a fabTABulous sound system, lighting, large video screens, great programs (great graphics printed on high-end paper), a funny and engaging host, and awesome music-making.

Also to their credit was world class musicianship. The choir had the entire program memorized. Conductor, Mack Wilberg, is also a world-class maestro whose arrangements are top drawer.

This is the only symphonic-sized choir with orchestra that tours in the world. You may ask "how do they the do it?" The answer is simple: on the backs of 600+ volunteers who sacrifice two weeks of vacation time every other year. It would be otherwise impossible financially methinks.

Mo Tab is a major LDS, Inc. brand.

mrtranquility Wrote:
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> This is the only symphonic-sized choir with
> orchestra that tours in the world. You may ask
> "how do they the do it?" The answer is simple: on
> the backs of 600+ volunteers who sacrifice two
> weeks of vacation time every other year. It would
> be otherwise impossible financially methinks.
>
> Mo Tab is a major LDS, Inc. brand.

They beg for donations. My brother in a stake presidency gets letters for them to raise XXXXXX dollars for the Mo Tab tour from their wealthy stake members.

Same as they set fund raising goals for the stake so the church can donate to area colleges, like a grand piano, or a performance stage and so on.

> They beg for donations. My brother in a stake
> presidency gets letters for them to raise XXXXXX
> dollars for the Mo Tab tour from their wealthy
> stake members.

Just wow. My TBM wife bought the tickets, and they were not cheap (I want to say they were over $30/ticket for the nosebleed section). So on top that they make the members pay to walk in the door. The box office take had to be pretty good.

You would think that with their very low labor overhead costs that donations wouldn't be needed. Who knows, maybe they don't! With their financial opacity there's no way to know where the money goes.

I think the exmo community should hire Bonneville to use its Heartsell method to sell exmo'ism.

I know nothing about search alorithms but when I search google for heartsell, the bonneville page is no. 4 on the list.

So I ended up in a significant debate on this topic with a TBM on my FB page.

He was fine with the church using emotional propaganda to market its product.

Told me I was 'past feeling' or I would be fine with it too...

I was like huh??

If you type HeartSell in with quotes and the trademark sign,it still comes right up: "HeartSell"®

Of course, who is going to go through that much trouble?