Soliciting Restaurant Customers
Here’s a nifty little idea that NSD Kristin Sharpe has to get a restaurant to let you set up a table in the area of their entrance or hostess station. October is breast cancer awareness month and domestic violence awareness month. So why not exploit those causes for Mary Kay?
Tell the owner or manager of the restaurant that you’d like to distribute information to women in the community. Since people will be waiting for a table at your restaurant, the Mary Kay lady can have a table with a game, prize giveaways, and goodie bags with information on breast exams and domestic violence.
Below is the script and the goodie bag you can put together. What do you think of tactics like this? Personally, I think they are exploiting good causes and it’s a sneaky way to push your wares.
Visit the
What an original way to lose my business. I would walk out and call in a complaint.
Yes. It is most definitely exploitative.
Also – does MK not understand that breast cancer and domestic violence can happen to ANYONE – regardless of sex or gender? Reading that call script that MK provides really irked me.
Just my two cents.
I just HATE companies like MK using a “cause” to make themselves look good. Sure, it’s nice that Mk has their foundation that gives money to these causes, but they got their money from the exploitation of women. There is no honor in that.
You have to have no conscious to do this!
Cancer and domestic violence are no joking matters!!!@@
Yeah, I don’t see Bobbi Brown or any other brand handing out cotton balls sprayed with fragrance. So chintzy!
What a lousy idea.
“Come in on a night when you’re extra busy.” Managers/servers are looking to turn tables, not put up with women handing out cards/prizes and playing “fun games”. And I see she’s adding domestic violence in there, too.
Isn’t organza porous? The fragrance would likely dissipate on the way to the restaurant. Probably a good thing.
Kristin mentions a Strategy Manual. I bet it’s a classic.
Wow, a used cotton ball. What a great goodie bag.
Why would an IBC even have to resort to something this demeaning? I thought the products sold themselves.
The whole ruse wreaks of desperation. And how demeaning is it to stand at a card table in the foyer of the restaurant hawking your wares? All while giving away a scented cottonball and sachet as a “goodie” bag?
A real business would be able to advertise and set up a storefront. But MK Corp has it’s IBC’s loitering in hallways and foyers…. smh.
Your why question might be rhetorical, but I’ll answer anyway. 🙂
Because it’s so hard to get new people to book parties. You have to scrape to find people.
MK forbids its consultants from opening up their own commercial stores… but strongly encourages them to stalk for customers in OTHER companies’ stores.
How twisted is that?
That’s actually an excellent point!
Think about it, though: if even 1 in 20 MK consultants opened a storefront, that’d be, what, 15,000 MK stores in the US? 20,000? Certainly more than there are Starbucks shops. The market saturation would no longer be a dirty little secret.
So they sell their wares out of other people’s stores, and hold parties in other people’s houses. Sounds legit.
I wish we could all agree to respond like this when asked to book one of these parties, “That’s an odd request. Why don’t you host your Mary Kay parties at your own house?”
They are “entrepreneurs, CEOs of their OWN Business … but they sell their wares out of other people’s stores (and won’t pay rent), and hold parties in other people’s houses. And prowl for customers in other retail establishments, ask strangers to advertise for them on that stranger’s social media account (paying with discounted product).
Sounds like a parasite infestation to me.
And why is she gluing her business card on the back of the breast cancer card?!
She’s surely not trying to drum up business for her pyramid scheme that exploits women using breast cancer awareness. What will these women stoop to?
Has this nitwit woman ever actually been in the front area of a restaurant where people are waiting for tables? There is no room to set up a table there for anything! it’s packed with people during the busiest times and the restaurant patrons will be very annoyed to have to walk around the table, or bump into it, or knock it over. If the restaurant wants to publicize breast cancer awareness month, most likely they have marketing and advertising staff or consultants that can come up with better ideas for them without involving a Mary Kay lady.
^^^ this! If I were to come across this in any restaurant… I would absolutely be annoyed. I’m paying good money for a good meal.. I do not want to be solicited by anyone.
^^ except by my wait staff with the dessert options! 😉
I went into a deli not long ago that had a lady signing people up for “Customer Appreciation giveaways”. I smelled either Elige or Belara on her, and walked past her. She didn’t even have a name badge or pin on. Just grosses me out.
Yikes,. I support the Think Before You Pink campaign that’s done by Breast Cancer Action…. This is everything that is wrong with the promotion of the pink ribbon and how it’s use isn’t as wholesome as it’s portrayed by many companies to be.
This is Pinkwashing at so many levels the first one is the fact that the “perfume” has cancer causing chemicals in it, the second being that any profit is probably not going to research/prevention or anywhere near helping those with breast cancer….
I wish I would see this at a local restaurant the poor MK lady and the manager would be schooled in how awful of a promotion this is.
Such tacky sales tactics. Exploit seniors, the homeless, women earning low income, children (oops their moms) during Halloween and now abused women or those with cancer. MK NSD’s sure are scraping the bottom of the barrel with these cringe worthy ideas. I found schlepping around MK products to be humiliating enough. Now add in being a carnival barker and we’ve moved to a whole new level of squeamish marketing scams. This should sway those MK consultants to quit immediately because this mlm certainly is in very poor condition.
If you are in a domestic violence situation, as they say in their spiel, do you really want to be handed information about it in front of the person who has likely put you in that situation? This is just a nightmare of exploitation.
WOW …that had not occurred to me.