Amvox of 12/19/97 sent by Amway Vice President Ken MacDonald

MESSAGE FROM AMWAY, DECEMBER 19, 1997
From Ken MacDonald

11:14 AM Remote message from Amway North America

"Hi everybody, this is Ken MacDonald with a message for Amway leadership. This is going to be a two-page message if I can fit it all into two pages, and the topic is The Internet. You are free to pass this message on to your downlines who ask questions, but as you will hear when we get rolling in here, given the sensitive nature of this, I ask that if you do pass it downline you do so without any additional commentary. We would really appreciate that, and it would help a lot. This message is on the internet, as I said. We have been working with the ADA board, and are ready to meet with them in January at the next meeting to show them several wonderful things.

1. The fact that we’ve taken our public site and significantly cleaned it up and improved it.

2. That we’ve hired some really top-notch outside consultants to create an all-new public site that we will premier to the board in January and then we’ll be able to turn on soon afterwards.

3. That we’ve hired consultants and been working very diligently on all of the secret computer language that helps the search engines pick a site and because of that we’ve moved the positive Amway sites quite a bit up in the web search engines, and some of the negative sites down. And lastly, that we are working to provide very soon, for all those who qualified Emeralds and above who want it their own personal homepage so we will have tons of positive Amway information on the web.

Having said all that, it’s now important for me to tell you about some information that we have just posted on our site. We’ve posted a button, put a button on our ABN site and also the Amway.com site that talks about free speech. When you click on that button, it takes you to a statement from Amway that makes three facts, or three statements. The first one is about free speech, and in that one we talk about how Amway and the Founding Families have always been active supporters of personal freedoms, including freedom of speech. And as you know, freedom, along with family, reward and hope comprise the Founders Fundamentals, the essential elements of Amways’ business philosophy. Number two is Amway’s position on the internet. We state that we are excited about the internet, and the potential to foster greater international communication and understanding and that we believe that respect for basic rights such as honesty and civility are essential to any marketplace of ideas, including the web. Now the third point that we have on our statement is about one of the negative sites, run by Mr. Sidney Schwartz and the Proctor & Gamble case. And so I can get that to you in its entirety and so I don’t goof up and say the wrong thing, what I’m going to do is read you that directly from our statement. And I will do that in page two so I don’t have to quit halfway through. So look for a page two on this. Thank you folks.