60 Minutes: Undercover Marketing

I just watched 60 Minutes and they had a piece on "undercover marketing." I must confess ... I had never heard the term till tonight. Basically, marketeers are trying to create buzz by sending their guys into the field with shiny new products in hand to engage people in casual, friendly encounters and conversations. About the products, of course. But you never know you are talking to an actor paid to deliver a message. Movies, cigarettes, booze, computer games, cell phones, everything. It's all being pitched to us ... under the cover of authentic, honest conversation.

Ok, I get that they want to do the word-of-mouth bit. But why lie? Why play with people's minds like this? Why risk the change of pissing off your potential customers? Now that I really don't get. Yet again, marketing misses the point of buzz and embarrasses itself. Buzz -- sustained buzz, anyway -- bubbles from the bottom and grows rapidly within and between well-connected communities because of anti-marketing sentiments. The marketing guys interviewed for the piece said this "undercover" stuff is trend setting. It's innovative, they said. Not for me. It's just another trick. It will ultimately backfire on an industry that seems clueless on how to deal with the emerging wave of genuine conversation in the market.

Jul 26, 2004

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Comments:

Yep, I watched that too and I thought that there is no end to the silly things that marketing people will go to in order to get a message out. I also felt that these people were possibly kidding themselves into thinking that the responses that they get from people were genuine. Consider the girl at the singles bar handing out smokes. She could have handed a "Monty Python crunchy frog" to the man she was talking to and he still would have said "yes, it has a smooth taste. So, what's your name, I haven't seen you here before." Nor ever again likely. The man with the VR glove playing a game at StarBucks is more likely to succeed in getting a product message out. In the end, the advertising world is one that is straight out of PT Barnum and Bailey where everything is a show and these days "everything is louder than everything else". "Underground" operations like this are merely an example of a person talking more quietly in order to be heard.

Posted by Dennis Clarke on July 27, 2004 at 12:09 AM JST #

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