Stealth marketing

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Corporations (usually multi-nationals) have started to use a strategy called 'stealth marketing' to create a favorable 'buzz' for their products.

It goes like this. Their corporate flacks hire attractive young models and actors to hang around demographically significant places (clubs, fashionable shops, 'hot' shopping districts). The con works with a variety of scripts. Somethimes they work in pairs and have long, excited public conversations about the corporatioon's newest products. Sometimes a single woman will sit at the bar and talk on a cell phone. Or the actor might approach you and try to strike up a preprogrammed conversation.

Such corporations also search the net for places like ILx and try to insinuate their marketing point of view into the general conversation. It would be best to assume ILx is, or has been a target by now, since it fits the golden demographics perfectly. The very fact that the people here are proud non-fashionistas, only makes you better tools, if the implant takes.

Welcome to the wonderful world of trust-abuse, ILE. It truly is a brave new world that has such shitheels in it.

― Aimless, Sunday, 1 February 2004 19:20 (twenty years ago) link

Yeah, I guess so. So, how about that new Tortoise?

― jazz odysseus, Sunday, 1 February 2004 19:24 (twenty years ago) link

GOOD CHARLOTTE!

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 1 February 2004 19:28 (twenty years ago) link

Dud.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Sunday, 1 February 2004 19:44 (twenty years ago) link

I avoided ad majors like the plague back in college. Devoting your life to thinking up shit like this is horrifying.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 1 February 2004 19:46 (twenty years ago) link

Google registered 10,000 hits on the simple search for "stealth marketing". The following is excerpted from this marketing site, just to give you an idea of what's out there:

Undercover marketing tactics can be varied. Some examples include the hiring of models to be seen drinking a particular new beverage at a bar, or using "tourists" to ask someone to take their picture, and then explaining the benefits of the new camera they are using. OnPoint can conduct almost any stealth marketing activity you can imagine, with the possibilities only limited by imagination....

...Note: OnPoint can conduct stealth marketing promotions in all major markets including, but not limited to: Atlanta - Austin - Boston - Chicago - Columbus - Dallas - Denver - Detroit - Houston - Indianapolis - Kansas City - Las Vegas - Los Angeles LA - Miami - Minneapolis - New Orleans - New York City NYC - Orange County - Orlando - Philadelphia - Phoenix - Portland - Sacramento - San Diego - San Francisco Bay Area - San Jose - Seattle - Tucson - Washington DC

― Aimless, Sunday, 1 February 2004 20:10 (twenty years ago) link

with the possibilities only limited by imagination....

well, that and shame.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 1 February 2004 20:12 (twenty years ago) link

Orange County

As yet I have had no models posing as tourists coming to the UCI library and asking me to take their picture with the book security gate.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 1 February 2004 20:37 (twenty years ago) link

Seems fair enough to me.

― Markelby (Mark C), Sunday, 1 February 2004 20:51 (twenty years ago) link

Since when has nytimes.com started charging for access to their archives? Argh, probably ages ago.... anyway, about 3 years ago the NY Times magazine had an article abt how Tivo was killing commercials, which would somehow lead to 10,000 brands of cornflakes. That article was a huge hit at work (we are all about personalized marketing) because it was such a crazy hypothesis that you could shoot cannons through his assumptions.

"Stealth" marketing is actually kind of old- like Barnes & Noble stores which have tables with piles of books in the middle of their stores; usually they are getting paid a LOT to feature particular books out there.

As far as hiring models, etc, to talk about products, it's a practice that really took off after The Tipping Point was published. Very interesting book to read if you want to learn why corporations think this is a good way to "generate buzz"...

― lyra (lyra), Sunday, 1 February 2004 20:52 (twenty years ago) link

Another strategy called neuromarketing consist of scanning the brain of test audience in real time to see which ad is being associated with one's sense of self. Sounds like stuff out of a cyberpunk novel, like, "the bar of memetic warfare has been raised".

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 1 February 2004 21:15 (twenty years ago) link

lyra, "kind of old" could mean either "considered archaic and generally abandoned" or "considered ordinary and well-established". As not all ILEers are employed as marketers, what you consider old news might still come as a surprise to we, the individual atoms of the Great Target Audience.

― Aimless, Sunday, 1 February 2004 21:40 (twenty years ago) link

Great Target Audience beware! We are hijacking yr brains!!! ;-)

― lyra (lyra), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:05 (twenty years ago) link

I am wondering if some of the aggressively defensive stuff regarding a well known corporate power, on this thread is a good example of stealth marketing.

― Stringent Stepper (Stringent), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:34 (twenty years ago) link

I'd let Apple pay me to do this. I'm happy to broadcast the fact that my every post comes to you from the dead-sexy PowerBook G4. Actually, paying people just to be overheard having conversations about products is kind of amusing.

― Sean (Sean), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:35 (twenty years ago) link

Not highjacking our brains, lyra, but abusing our trust. I know I am not alone when I say that I evaluate information based on the source, and a source that poses as disinterested, while being very starkly but secretly self-interested, is deliberately misleading. It is knowingly lying to people and that's actually kind of shitty, although it is also kind of 'old, too. That's all.

― Aimless, Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:36 (twenty years ago) link

HAVE YOU GUYS HEARD OF THE STROKES???????????????????????????

― Jon Williams (ex machina), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:37 (twenty years ago) link

Message: never talk to people and never go to bars. And always go to libraries.

― Jim Robinson (Original Miscreant), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:57 (twenty years ago) link

Well yeah.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 1 February 2004 22:59 (twenty years ago) link

Oh dont try and go making libraries cool, now.

― Patrick Kinghorn, Sunday, 1 February 2004 23:02 (twenty years ago) link

They already are.

― Aja (aja), Sunday, 1 February 2004 23:03 (twenty years ago) link

I was about to say, I don't have to try at all!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 1 February 2004 23:04 (twenty years ago) link

HAVE YOU GUYS HEARD OF THE STROKES???????????????????????????
-- Jon Williams

Jon, r u advertising some medicine against them??????????????

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Sunday, 1 February 2004 23:05 (twenty years ago) link

(no i meant all the marketing twats. libraries are good enough as they are without some pinch-faced models hanging around them)
x-post

― Patrick Kinghorn, Sunday, 1 February 2004 23:08 (twenty years ago) link

I've always thought the major problem with this approach is that, unless you happen to actually know the beautiful hip people at the bar or club personally, you (or, well, I) tend to assume they're probably poser assholes and ridicule them accordingly. That this reaction is in part -- maybe in large part -- rooted in spite and insecurity does nothing to obviate it. So to make this work, you'd have to actually pay these people to befriend people at the bars and clubs -- have drinks with them, engage them in long conversations about, you know, whatever hip and beautiful people talk about, maybe even make plans to get together for a drink next Thursday at that other hip bar or club. Social hookers, in other words -- except that, instead of paying someone to be your hip beautiful friend, some corporation would be paying them to be your hip beautiful friend. That might engender some actual brand loyalty. But anything short of that just seems like a waste of time. If I was a shareholder at some company doing this, I'd be writing lots of snide letters to the CEO.

― spittle (spittle), Monday, 2 February 2004 04:02 (twenty years ago) link

the idea started in the 80s with "street marketing" where record labels would do precisely that. they'd give promos to the local drug dealer or other arbiter of hip and let it make its way through the social network.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 2 February 2004 04:04 (twenty years ago) link

I actually once knew someone who does (or did) this. They were paid to sit in bars, be pretty and smoke X brand of cigarettes (this was pre-bloomberg). It has to work at least as well as traditional advertising (associating beautiful people with a product in television, magazine, etc. ads) if not better, simply because the target market does not know that they are being advertized to (at?).

― mouse, Monday, 2 February 2004 04:11 (twenty years ago) link

oh no street teams oh no
So, how bout them Blurillaz?

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Monday, 2 February 2004 04:12 (twenty years ago) link

ILM threads that seem suspiciously like the work of stealth marketers (just look at those titles!):

Why is everyone not going totally bonkers about the junior boys?
Goddamnit ILM, talk about Eamon! Eamon: C or D?
uh, has any body heard this guy's cd?!?!?!?
OMG Daft Punk are freaking spoiling us OMG
Have you heard of this guy?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 2 February 2004 04:17 (twenty years ago) link

Not accusing Dave Stelfox surely.....

― pete s, Monday, 2 February 2004 04:19 (twenty years ago) link

Haha "Dave Stelfox"

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 2 February 2004 04:22 (twenty years ago) link

Aren't Mars Bars great?

― Matt (Matt), Monday, 2 February 2004 08:33 (twenty years ago) link

i encourage all to go to the gap. and buy lots of khakis.

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Monday, 2 February 2004 09:15 (twenty years ago) link

Last year Ed and I were at Public Life and we got hit up by a street team who wanted to buy everyone in the pub who wanted one of "their" beers. Except the beer that was supposed to be there had not arrived. Idiots. Idiots on 30k a year.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 2 February 2004 10:50 (twenty years ago) link

They wanted to buy everyone in the pub? Is this a tale of your narrow escape from the advertising white slave trade?

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 2 February 2004 11:39 (twenty years ago) link

Je suis desolé, tres fatiguée.

No, they wanted to buy 'their' beer for each of the 10 or so people in the BAR. Public Life is a BAR. And an ex-toilet, but a BAR nonetheless.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 2 February 2004 11:43 (twenty years ago) link

Surely désolée?

(I'll stop picking on Suzy now :))

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 2 February 2004 12:51 (twenty years ago) link

I always faintly suspected that Klint Betz might have have an ulterior motive on this thread (a few googlers in)

Red Bull: Classic or Dud?

― Ferrrrrrg (Ferg), Monday, 2 February 2004 18:33 (twenty years ago) link

Speaking of which did anyone notice that KFC is calling themselves Kitchen Fresh!

― Huck Stable (Horace Mann), Monday, 2 February 2004 18:40 (twenty years ago) link

Don't smoke!
You can get lung cancer from cigarettes, so try CHEWLIE'S GUM instead.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 2 February 2004 18:42 (twenty years ago) link

wouldn't it be amazing if this thread's title became starbuck's new ad campaign?

Coffee, you nasty bitch, you've saved your flesh for later!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 2 February 2004 19:27 (twenty years ago) link

http://kentuckyfriedchicken.com/about/facts.htm ("Get the facts about KFC Kitchen Fresh Chicken," they say)

― jody (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 2 February 2004 19:35 (twenty years ago) link

one month passes...

it appears that our host andrew deleted a coupla bits of stealth marketing-type stuff quite recently (see admin log 30-03-04). I heartily approve of such action! there's a few bits of stuff over on ilm of late that have that kind of feel abt them as well. hmmmm.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:48 (twenty years ago) link

Oh, and btw, I just tried this really great new beer. Let me tell you about how cool it is! Better yet, let me buy you one! (etc)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:49 (twenty years ago) link

have you guys heard of this band called the Red Bull Dozers? I heard that they're really good!

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:50 (twenty years ago) link

rival gangs of stealth marketers beating each other up in bars would rule, actually.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:51 (twenty years ago) link

Or just buying each other drinks!

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 1 April 2004 16:08 (twenty years ago) link

ALCOHOL LEADS 2 VIOLENCE, KIDZ.

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 1 April 2004 16:09 (twenty years ago) link

Keep up the good work lads.

― Aying Erbrau (Tico Tico), Thursday, 1 April 2004 16:11 (twenty years ago) link

ten months pass...

couldn't find the thread i was looking for, but... anyone noticed how much more frequently ilx has been gettin ghit up by random spam (you know, the whole "hey check out liveplasma.com! thing or whatever) lately?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 19:41 (nineteen years ago) link

unless that's not an ad. sorry. but still, whether or not that example is, there's been many lately.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 19:42 (nineteen years ago) link

it's not an ad, it's from a longtime poster. If someone who hadn't posted before started up with that, I would have deleted it.

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 19:44 (nineteen years ago) link

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