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In an example of stealth marketing, Julia Royter, 26, of Brooklyn, hands… (Sabo/News)
Stealth marketing: When you're being pitched and you don't even know it!
BY JACOB E. OSTERHOUT
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, April 19, 2010
It's happy hour and Julia Royter, a pretty 26-year-old actress, flirts with a well-dressed man in a midtown bar.
After a few minutes, she relents and hands over her BlackBerry Pearl for him to enter his number. But she'll
never call.
It's all a crafty promotional trick called stealth marketing, an ethically dubious practice that has regained the
spotlight with Friday's release of the film "The Joneses."
Royter is being paid to flirt. She's part of a covert ad campaign for BlackBerry that attempts to drum up interest
in smart phones by putting them in the hands of attractive, gregarious young women who push the product
without the public's knowledge.
"I was with a bunch of hot girls and we would just walk into bars, whip out our BlackBerries and try to get guys
to look at them by flirting," says Royter. "We'd say, 'Put your number in my phone and I'll totally call you. We'll
go out on a date!' But we just wanted them to try the BlackBerry. I definitely didn't call anyone."
The company didn't respond to requests for comment.
Stealth marketing, also called undercover or buzz marketing, has been just that - stealthy - but now "The
Joneses" is bringing it to the big screen.
The dark comedy stars David Duchovny and Demi Moore as the heads of a seemingly perfect family that is
actually just a team of stealth marketers paid by brands to look perfect and push products on their friends and
neighbors.
"Stealth marketers probably believe they're providing a service because they are providing information on good
products they believe in," the movie's writer and director, Derrick Borte, told The Times newspaper in the U.K.
"But I don't think there is a defined line for where it stops and starts. We have to be suspicious of every
message we see from everywhere at this point."
For companies who do it, the risks of stealth marketing outweigh the benefits, says Jonathan Margolis, CEO of
the Michael Alan Group and co-author of "Guerrilla Marketing for Dummies."
"It might work if the product is good enough, but ultimately the consumer is being duped," he says. "It's risky to
stage something that people think is a natural occurrence.
"There is a potential for backlash. Consumers don't like being deceived and brands don't want to look bad."
But not everyone views stealth marketing in a negative light.
"Stealth marketing has a greater potential to make a more sincere impact on the public as opposed to a TV or
billboard ad," says Jason Van Trentlyon, president of Street Guerrilla Marketing. "People are inundated with so
many blatant advertisements on TV and in magazines that they don't pay attention anymore. This is a way of
creating buzz and any buzz is good buzz."
Sony Ericsson holds the distinction of having launched the most notorious stealth marketing campaign. When
the company first came out with a camera phone in 2002, it hired actors in 10 cities to pretend to be tourists
who would stop passersby and ask to have their photos taken.
Dee Dutta, Sony Ericsson's corporate vice president of global marketing, considered the fake tourist campaign
a success due mostly to the media attention the stunt garnered from the likes of "60 Minutes" and "ABC
News."
"For the kind of money we spend, these campaigns are very effective," he told CMO Magazine.
Today, stealth marketing has transitioned online. Companies often hire marketers to post positive reviews of
their products on appropriate message boards or in chat rooms without revealing their affiliations. The practice
became so common that savvy shoppers learned to snuff out the masquerading marketers.
"Online infiltration was popular for a while," says Margolis. "But now a lot of blogs and webmasters are very
aware of it and as soon as they see someone doing something not kosher they will kick them off."
Even Wal-Mart was caught using stealth tactics online when it set up Walmarting Across America - a fake blog
that supposedly recounted one couple's trip across the U.S. in a camper van that they frequently parked in
Wal-Mart parking lots.
There are also companies that try to create buzz by releasing undercover videos on YouTube.
In 2007, a video purportedly showing an upset bride on her wedding day cutting off her hair went viral and was
viewed almost 3 million times in two weeks. The video turned out to be an advertising stunt for Sunsilk hair
care products, even though the product was not featured once in the clip.
But that doesn't matter, says Van Trentlyon.
"The point is to get press," he says. "If you are able to get the media's attention without completely p******
people off, so much the better."
For her part, Royter views her job as an extension of her acting career.
"This is an opportunity to play a flirtatious character," she says. "It's all pretty evil. You've got to be careful
these days. You never know who is trying to sell you something."