Jacob E. Osterhout takes the occasion of the release of "The Joneses," a comedy starring David Duchovny and Demi Moore as a pair of stealth marketers masquerading as a perfect family, to take a look
at the state of the burgeoning industry that he says is also called "undercover or buzz marketing."
Osterhout leads with the tale of a pretty 26-year-old actress flirting with a man
in a midtown New York bar. When she passes him her BlackBerry to thumb in his phone number, however, she really doesn't have a date in mind. She just wants him to try the device. "You've got to be
careful these days," she warns. "You never know who is trying to sell you something."
BlackBerry didn't respond to a request for comment, but Sony Ericsson's Corporate VP of Global
Marketing Dee Dutta is among those who defend stealth marketing in the article. The company is the proud progenitor of one of the most successful stealth campaigns -- a 2002 effort where actors in 10
cities pretending to be tourists stopped passersby and asked to have their photos taken with a new camera phone. It generated a lot of press. "For the kind of money we spend, these campaigns are very
effective," Dutta told CMO Magazine.
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