Bonneville International was formed in 1964. It was owned completely by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It functioned as a broadcasting company, providing services in radio and programing.
In 1980, Bonneville International formed Bonneville Communications Corporation. The primary purpose of Bonneville Communications Corporation was to broadcast LDS General Conference twice a year.
They didn’t just broadcast, though. They found their niche in emotional manipulation of large audiences.
In 2014, the Bonneville Communications Corporation website promoted the company as “an essential resource for organizations with vital messages.”
“At Bonneville Communications, our ability to touch the hearts and minds of audiences makes us an essential resource for organizations with vital messages.
For more than 30 years, our creative professionals have designed public service and direct response messages for national nonprofit organizations such as the Huntsman Cancer Institute, Boy Scouts of America, National Hospice Foundation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The Salvation Army.
Our unique strength is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of our audiences, evoking first feeling, then thought and, finally, action. We call this uniquely powerful brand of creative “HeartSell”® – strategic emotional advertising that stimulates response.
Our people not only create effective messages; we get them out effectively.” [1]
The Church owned company—the one they created to broadcast General Conference; the one they still use today—trademarked a message-delivery system which promoted positive emotions. Emotions which could easily be construed as spiritual promptings.
That echoey, stifling sound of a General Conference talk is not some accident, caused by a large auditorium. Rather, it is a strategic move by a corporation which seeks to manipulate its members; a corporation which can’t rely on its messages to convey spiritual feelings. They’ve got to rely on finely tuned speakers and well-trained audio mixers to do that.
It’s difficult, for me, at least, to imagine the Lord Jesus Christ at the head of a program like Heartsell®.
If the messages were true—if these were the Lord’s chosen—wouldn’t their words be enough to evoke a spiritual response?
If this weren’t enough, the Bonneville Communications Corporation removed their self-promotion from their website as soon as Church critics began asking questions. Today, it’s nowhere to be found. Heartsell® is a ghost to the common membership and it’s masqueraded as a Holy one. They members’ll never know it’s there. They’ll watch General Conference, they’ll listen to the speakers, they’ll sing the songs—and all the while, Heartsell® will do what it does: “[touching] the hearts and minds of [its] audiences, evoking first feeling, then thought and, finally, action.”
[1] From Bonneville Communications; though the page has long since been deleted, it can be found on its internet archive page.
