• Word Spy , Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:33 AM

murketing n. A form or marketing where the product or service is not mentioned or shown. [Blend of murky and marketing.] "Murketing is a vague form of marketing -- the message isn't clearly spelled out, and the ad seems to bear little relation to the product," writes Kevin Courtney in The Irish Times.

Pabst's Neal Stewart, for example, understood that overt commercial messages would turn off his target audience. Thus, the company shunned celebrity endorsements -- Kid Rock had been interested -- and devoted its budget instead to sponsoring a series of unlikely gatherings across the country. Like "some kind of small-scale National Endowment for the Arts for young American outsider culture," Pabst paid the bills at bike messenger contests.

Similarly, to popularize its youth-focused Scion brand, Toyota held parties for editors of indie magazines with names like Art Prostitute. The term is most closely associated with New York Times columnist Rob Walker, who presides over the Murketing (The Journal Of) blog http://www.murketing.com/journal/.

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