Sacred Marketing

I’m fascinated by Mormon nitch marketing, from come to Zion’s bank and open a mission savings account for your infant, to most anything pushed by Desert Book. In the Improvement Era, and other now defunct official or semi-official church publications you use to get adds for products like Postum, the then Church owned Beneficial Life Insurance company, and Salt Lake area hotels (where you and your family can stay when you visit to attend General Conference or go to the Temple). But I never thought I’d see adds like these (click here). I guess it makes since in an odd way, commerce and Mormonism became quite intertwined do to social and physical isolation from the larger world, only in recent decades has the Church thoroughly divested itself from most of its business holdings, though what it still controls now can hardly be called small.

The Garment ads are fascinating in that they showcase a parallel society, running just to the side of the rest of free market America, and surprisingly unconcerned with what they think. Well at least it was more that way back then, now we're much more concerned with what others think, but still pretty stubborn about having our own way in some areas. Garment sales were surprisingly unregulated until I believe the 1960’s, when it started to catch on that ‘Gentile’ tourists to Utah were buying the things as souvenirs of their visit to Mormon country, much as you would by a sombrero in Mexico. You shall not make light of sacred things, so the adds were pulled and one must now posses a temple recommend to buy a holy Mormon undergarment (unless one can find some on eBay).