Motivating Rituals

Abstract

In September 2005, three months after Irma Ruiz came to Morelia, Luisa organized a bus trip for 50 distributors to attend the Omnilife rally. The bus left from her support center in Morelia at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning and arrived in Guadalajara at dawn. She, Pamela, and Marco had driven up on Friday and spent the night in a hotel, so she left her uncle Diego in charge of checking in the passengers, distributing tickets, and securing seats to the event. Because construction crews were preparing the usual site of Omnilife’s rally for the future home of the Chivas soccer stadium, the bus dropped us off in a vast field across from an amphitheater on the University of Guadalajara campus. Even at that early hour, scores of buses had begun to fill the parking lot, several decorated with banners indicating their home states. I entered the tented lobby and saw dozens of booths representing Omnilife’s constellation of companies. As if at a convention, thousands of distributors crowded a table giving away free samples of hydroponically grown lettuce, perused stacks of past issues of the corporate magazine, and posed for photographs with a BMW at the auto loan booth. The Chivas soccer team dominated an entire section of the lobby with a trophy display and games for children. At the table devoted to Omnilife’s yoga school, I spotted Carla, the diamond distributor from Morelia, buying two instructional DVDs.