Callum:
Hello, I’m Callum Robertson. How do you decide what particular product to buy? These days we are bombarded by advertising and marketing messages: on television, on radio, product placement in films, adverts on the underground, posters in the streets, people handing out fliers, pop ups when we browse the internet, junk mail sent to our homes or spam to our email, cards left under the windscreen wipers of our cars, it goes on and on. According to one commentator we receive several thousand marketing messages every day.
But it’s not only these obvious and direct forms of advertising that help us to decide what to buy, in fact we often ignore these because we are sick and tired of all the advertising. We know it’s advertising and we don’t really trust it.
One genuine and honest way we get information is through word of mouth. Word of mouth. This expression means we hear about something because other people have been talking about it. Maybe family or friends recommend something to us, tell us a film is good, for example. We trust their opinion so we go to see the film.
We might also learn about things because we overhear other people talking about them – on the train, in a café or in the pub, for example. But now it seems that even this form of information may not be entirely genuine.
Advertising companies are having to become more creative and imaginative in order to sell us things. One new form of advertising that is becoming more and more common is known as buzz marketing or stealth marketing.
What is it? Well there is a clue in the name. Stealth is an adjective for something that is very difficult to detect. Stealth bombers, for example, are planes that can’t be seen by radar. Stealth marketing is advertising that can’t be detected, the people being advertised to, you and me, do not know that what they are experiencing is actually advertising. We think it’s genuine.
For example you might be in a café or a pub and you hear people talking about something, maybe it’s a new mobile phone or a new service of some kind. You think they are ordinary people so you might consider that what they are recommending to each other is an honest source of information. But, you could be wrong. Stealth marketing companies employ actors to go to places where people are and they act out a script which involves talking about particular products or services.
Graham Goodkind
works for Sneeze, one of these stealth marketing companies, and he describes scenarios. Scenarios, different scenes with invented storylines which people overhear. He uses another related word as well, ‘eavesdropping’. ‘Eavesdropping .’ Eavesdropping is when you deliberately listen to someone else’s conversation. Anyway, here’s Graham Goodkind talking about one kind of stealth marketing.
Graham Goodkind
General conversations that you might think you are overhearing, which you’re not, you are overhearing them but you’re meant to overhear them, there might be eavesdropping, there might be an argument, there might be two long lost friends. We create lots of different scenarios that a casual observer listens to. And the storylines are made up to grab people’s attention much like an advertising campaign that you would see on TV is made up to grab your attention.
Callum:
He says they use conversations that you are meant to overhear and they might have a story in the same way as an advert on television does. The difference is that on television you know you are being advertised to. Does Graham think these advertising scenarios are dishonest at all? Graham Goodkind Well at the end everything is very transparent, at the end of all our scenarios there is a reveal process whereby the fact that people are being essentially advertised to is revealed to them. So it’s done in a very transparent and honest way.
Callum:
Graham says that at the end of the scenario there is a ‘reveal’ process. People are told that they are being advertised to. He explains more about this reveal process.
Graham Goodkind
The reveal normally, we recommend to our clients that are doing this sort of marketing that the reveal involves some form of maybe discount or award so that at the end of the day, people feel a: entertained, they’ve been involved, they’ve experienced advertising they’ve been a part of it, and then they feel actually very good about it because there is some pay off.
Callum:
So the people who have overheard the conversations can get a discount on the product or some other prize after listening to the scenario. And Graham says that this works because people feel involved and they’ve got something themselves, a pay off. But of course that only works if people have stayed around to the end of the scenario! So, the next time you’re in a bar, café or maybe just sitting on a train and you hear people talking about something they’ve bought, before you think that it’s a good word of mout