I was reading through my blog feeds this weekend and came across one post that mentioned stealth marketing as a tactic for businesses to 'carefully' engage in. I read through what the author (who shall remain nameless) was saying and it made me stop what I was doing, cringe and get fired up.
For those that don't know, stealth marketing is defined by Wikipedia as:
Undercover marketing (also known as buzz marketing, stealth marketing, or by its detractors roach baiting) is a subset of guerrilla marketing where consumers do not realize they are being marketed to.
This is not marketing, it is deceit plain and simple. It is also one of the main reasons that marketers are increasingly coming under fire. Through the use of technology, this practice is becoming easier for companies to participate in and there are companies out there who leverage the perceived anonymity of the Internet to advance their client's campaigns.
Tactics that fall into the stealth definition include: creating flogs, adjusting rankings on sites like Amazon or EBay, paying users to change information or creating manufactured content alleged to be from a consumer. Instances of companies trying to get away with this by using social marketing as the vehicle are popping up all over the place and as of right now there is no real way to protect against it. Each individual site would be charged with validating the authenticity of each user's real identity.
The United Kingdom has taken steps to make this practice of deception illegal and punishable at the individual level. (A hat tip to Ben McConnell @ Church of the Customer Blog who offers his opinion on this here.) This is the first major step by any country to help stop this.
The line between stealth marketing and real customer evangelism is pretty clear. Just look at who is originating the message. Evangelism happens when the customer is pulling the marketer in to conversations and communities, not when a company is pushing its way into the conversation. Arming those evangelists with the means to do this is acceptable (adding Digg or Bloglines links for example). Pretending to be one of those customers is unethical.
Just use the Mom test. If you wouldn't call your Mom and tell her what you did, it's probably not ethical. Can you imagine calling home to say "Yeah Mom, Hi. I took place in a deceptive marketing campaign by pretending to be someone else, made some blog posts as them and tricked hundreds of people into buying some product that I don't actually use." I sure wouldn't tell my mom that.
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marketing, buzz, stealth marketing
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