Covert marketing has us spinning
out of control
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Business can come between
friends. Everyone knows that. Deals go bad, promises are broken, money goes south
and before you know it, the Christmas list is shorter by one.
But what happens when business is undercover?
Buzz marketing, in which corporations deploy armies
of civilians to go around mentioning their products, is one of the hottest trends
in advertising.
If you're not familiar with it, you may be buying
more, much more, than you really want.
Yesterday, after reading a story about previously
normal people now working covertly (and essentially unpaid) to promote products
to unsuspecting acquaintances and friends, I took a good hard look at my husband.
Did he really enjoy the article in The
New Yorker he'd just told me about? Or has the magazine started a guerrilla marketing
program that he's part of?
And that casual remark my mom made about her hand
cream?
Hmmm.
As corporations ramp up viral marketing techniques
to manufacture what was once innocent word-of-mouth - to the point where there's
now a Word of Mouth Marketing Association - you've got to wonder who you can trust.
It's like the old days of the Eastern Bloc nations,
where neighbor would spy on neighbor, except that in a democracy like ours, it's
neighbor spinning neighbor.
``Comrade, have you seen the movie `Sideways?'
It's excellent. And my Blackberry - don't know how I lived without it.''
From now on, women won't throw Tupperware parties.
That's too obvious. An agent will simply bring her lunch to work in Tupperware.
``You wouldn't believe how it's changed my sex life,'' she'll whisper.
Ethicists have questioned the morality of secret
marketing, but I see an even more disturbing issue: I think it really underscores
the pitiful state of conversation in our society. Forget wit, forget friendly
banter about topics of the day. Need an icebreaker? Talk about how PepsiOne is
infinitely better than C2.
And I wonder how far these ``viral marketing'' or
``seeding'' programs will go. Suppose, just suppose, that Gwyneth didn't name
her baby after the fruit, but after the computer. And Julia naming one of her
babies after the sitcom maid of days from the 1960s? I smell a rerun syndication.
Pretty soon everyone is going to be suspect.
Or, to put it another way: Does she work for Clairol?
Even her hairdresser doesn't know for sure.
