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Research Article
ISSN 2229 – 3795
The role of stealth marketing strategy to manipulate teenagers
Veena Tripathi
Research Scholar, Department of Business Administration, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorkhpur
University, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Marketing Communication has migrated to another paradigm to manipulate the influential
consumer of their products in the family. Teenagers are playing a role as a strongly
opinionated buyer in family buying process and to give regard to this marketers are trying to
impose products on them by playing with their cognitive enthusiasm. To orchestrate this
Marketers have started applying Stealth Marketing to communicate with teenagers which
encourage unfair practices. The New Marketing Strategy is also featured as Buzz or
Undercover Marketing. This new concept of marketing mislead consumer through
advertisements of their product which is not significant to them. When this strategy, target
teenagers, it leads to deceptive and unethical practices. This paper is an attempt to gain an
insight into how marketers, manipulate Teenagers decision making process by raising Stealth
marketing techniques. It is an exploratory study aimed at understanding the way marketers
work to hold consumer. This paper highlights the research done in the last five years on role
of Stealth Marketing in manipulating teenagers and identifies areas for future research with
India as the focus. The paper provides evidence of stealth marketing in manipulating
teenagers. The study tried to elaborate the concept of Stealth Marketing by highlighting two
Indian television advertisements and from Facebook as an example of social networking.
This paper also tried to explore the semantic characteristics used in Indian advertisement
which are targeting Teenagers. The study comes out with the useful insight and
recommendation which would be helpful in further research.
Keywords: Stealth marketing, teenagers, advertisement, television, ethics.
1. Introduction
The advent of marketing changed the way we think forever. The world became euphoric
about how this marketing communication shares their activities to promote the new arrivals
and forms a space in consumer minds. The purpose of marketing is to create an image of the
brand in the minds of the target consumer. The American Marketing Association elucidates
marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating,
delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and
society at large” (American Marketing Association 2009). The different tools of marketing
communication are advertising, personal selling, promotion, direct selling, PR & publicity.
The purpose of these communication tools is to make the public aware about the products and
services which are floating in the market. Marketing tools bombarded the spectators from
their continuous advertisements, many times they are not able to link the adverts which are
targeted to them, still they are eager to consume the product due to regress marketing
techniques. Philips (1997) mentioned in his book Ethics and Manipulation in advertising that,
“some advertisers, perhaps, go too far and use their ads to manipulate people, whether they
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are adults or teenagers, the aim is to sell, no matter what or to whom, without taking into
consideration if they are offering the right products to the right people”. Some advertisers
often hide or meld the real information of the product to sell it to the teenagers. When these
adverts target adults, being as more experienced consumer this segment are able to decode
the hidden message behind the idea, but the cognitive brain of teenagers won’t be able to
interpret the idea of the organization.
Some marketers try to manipulate the idea of adverts and shaped it as per the demand of
market to enhance the current trading of their company, which leads to deceptive marketing.
This new strategy of Marketing is noted as Stealth Marketing or Buzz Marketing. In Stealth
Marketing, people are unknowingly part of the campaign to support the promotion. When
these promotional strategies target teenagers, it creates a most deceptive way and proves the
unethical practices of an organization to advertise their product. The aim of this paper is to
highlight how stealth marketing strategies manipulate teenagers from different modes of
communication.
2 Review of literature
Teenagers are now formed as a very potent segment for marketers. Teenagers have created
their own strong space in global markets, as they are having the most important spending
power. The immense potential of teenagers has mold marketers to create the advertisement as
per their changing demand. Marketers use different media tools to communicate with
teenagers. Among the communication tool, television advertisements play a major role
because of its audio - visual facility. Now online media are also popular among teenagers.
Teens are playing a very crucial role while using online media. This segment is very tech
savvy. Many times teens have tried to verify the product on the internet before buying them,
as they don’t want to take any risk on quality and value for their money. There are lots of
brands using different pricing strategy while producing the same product; it gives teens an
opportunity to easily switch the brand. To hold the consumers, there is a very high
competition in the market between the brands. To hold this segment and create the syndrome
of brand loyalty, marketers are creating strategies via different modes of communication to
make teens aware about the brand. In this section researcher focus on the concept of Stealth
Marketing since its inception to development of formulating manipulative techniques. The
researcher also tried to highlight the role of marketing in influencing teenagers.
2.1 Stealth marketing
AL Ries and Jack Trout (1986) argued in his book Marketing Warfare, as, “Marketing is war
and marketing concept’s customer oriented philosophy is inadequate, rather firms do better
by becoming competitor oriented”. In his book, he mentioned four marketing warfare
strategies which are “Defensive, Offensive, Flanking and Guerilla”. He described these
strategies as defensive is for market leaders, offensive is to increase market share and
flanking is for creating your own space in the market to generate profit. Guerilla strategy is
formed to make an organization survive in the market by creating awareness about the brand
to generate most profit by using low - cost. Jay Conrad Levinson introduced this new term
‘Guerilla’ in his book ‘Guerilla Advertising’ in 1984. Marketers follow deceptive, stealth and
unethical practices while using guerilla strategy. The role of manipulation has increased with
the formation of stealth marketing techniques. The concept stealth marketing was introduced
by Kaikati and Kaikati in 2004. Kaikati and Kaikati (2004) mentioned, “Stealth marketing
attempts to catch people at their most vulnerable by identifying the weak spot in their
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defensive shields”. According to them, six main types of stealth marketing techniques to
grab the attention of consumers are viral marketing, brand pushing, celebrity marketing, bait
and tease marketing, marketing video games and marketing in pop and rap music. Based on
this above concept of stealth, many more researchers have given their efforts elaborating
more on stealth marketing techniques. Roy & Chattopadhyay (2010) defined stealth
marketing as, “the use of surreptitious marketing practices that fail to disclose or reveal the
true relationship with the company that produces or sponsors the marketing message”.
Some researchers expressed the wider description of stealth marketing. Petterson (2010) in
his final thesis described, “Stealth marketing is trying to reach consumers without their
knowledge of being persuaded, and aims to plant marketing information in consumer’s minds
in order to avoid consumer’s tendency of ad-avoidance”. Schlegelmilch and Öberseder
(2010) claims, “the interest of ethical issues in marketing has increased with the development
of stealth marketing strategies”. It raised a question that stealth marketing creates unethical
practices which is not good for brand image of the organization. Rotfield (2008) elaborates
stealth marketing in three statements as, “Consumers are generally skeptical of any businessprovided sources of information, random endorsements by common man on the street shall
encourage more persuasive sales messages; second is persuasion advertising creators
consistently mention that they need to “break out” from the cluttered mass media
environment; and third statement is news reports of any coercion marketing activity include a
direct assertion”.
While following the researcher’s definition on stealth marketing, it has been found that many
stealth marketing won’t be able to receive immediate profit; though it creates an impact in
consumer’s mind to get more linked with today’s business environment. Adverts create a
buzz in the market or word of mouth which leads to stealth practices. Martin and Smith
(2008) explores, “Not all buzz or word of mouth marketing is deceptive, intrusive or what we
would describe as exploitative”. This explains that all adverts are not using stealth practices;
few intentionally target consumers to deceive them by playing with marketing instruments.
Brown and Krishan (2004) mentioned, “Some marketers clearly are turning to stealth tactics
to circumvent consumer skepticism, a protective mechanism used by consumers to guard
against marketing communication”. Consumers are not able to decode all description of an
advertisement. Marketers are trying to follow stealth techniques to make this decoding more
complex by using deceptive techniques. Stealth marketing strategies proves successful from
its immediate response of acceptance. Consumers are able to link with the stealth marketing
advertisement. Stealth Marketing techniques are successful in misleading the observers.
Researcher here defines the stealth marketing as an act used intentionally by marketers to
create a syndrome of rejuvenating feeling.
2.2 Marketers use stealth marketin/g as a strategy
The first advertisement of stealth marketing was composed by Sony Erricson’s in 2002,
where company hired sixty celebrities in ten major cities of New York to create a buzz of its
newly launched camera phone T68i. This stealth campaign was still criticized by several
researchers and companies in framing covert marketing as a technique to promote the product
in consumer’s mind. The campaign of T68i got viral and received huge success in several
countries and became one of the best-selling mobile phone of the year 2002. In the mentioned
advertisement, sponsored actors were not revealing their connection to the company to the
audience while promoting the phone. The success of this campaign gives an idea to the
companies to create a platform for their products by creating buzz in the market. Stealth
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strategy is very effective in creating awareness of a new product as consumers are able to
define the connection between the advert and their current demand. Consumer feels more
convinced towards the prompt presence of the advert. It also leads to persuasion techniques.
When consumers are the part of promotional activities, they like to share among their peer
group. It encourages word of mouth activities and message becomes easily reachable to the
customer. McCarty (2004) mentioned communication from persuasion attempt creates a
platform of recognizing the brand easily.
Preston (1994) briefs, ‘Companies can possibly find the loopholes in-laws and regulation as
they attempt to deceive their consumers into believing of their product”. It is important to
understand the way it gets used by all elements of marketing mix to elaborate how stealth
marketing is used by companies. Marketers can change perception of the consumers for the
brand from innovating new product, repositioning, having expected price, timely delivery.
Companies also follow product placement while using stealth techniques. In India, movies
are having a major role in memorizing the brand. Indian movies are doing product placement
from decades. The recognized movie Taal used Coke as product placement. The Anushka
Sharma starred “NH10” had promoted Toyota Innova.
Now marketers are banging on product placement to promote their product in Indian movies.
Celebrities also promote the brand by linking it with their story line with advertisements. Alia
Bhat and Shahid Kapoor are promoting and relating their movie “Shandaar” from the
weddingloans.com, and Colgate on Indian television advertisement. Companies sponsor the
designer clothes, cars, bikes, food products etc. in movies. The cost of endorsement or
advertisement is higher than the cost of product placement. Product placement are also part of
Indian songs as Fevicol was part of super hit song “mere photo ko” of Dabbang 2. Television
reality show “Big Boss” promoted many brands through their different task in show.
Companies tried to highlight about the consumer and usage of their brand in all these
promotional techniques. As celebrities are using these products, it creates credibility and
loyalty in the consumer’s mind for the brand. Stealth advertising raises the integrity issues of
the organizations, as it encourages deceptive way to promote the brand.
Companies explore stealth marketing by not sharing full information of the product in their
promotional activities. They delude consumers through stealth technique by not giving the
right information of the quality and cost of the product. Companies lift the unethical practices
by drafting fake usage of the product by the brand ambassadors or the celebrities used in the
advertisement. When FSSAI claimed few major violations against the Nestle flagship brand
product ‘Maggi’, regulators of FSSAI mentioned that Nestle misbrand their product and
didn’t label its product with ‘NO MSG added’. Kellog’s keep addressing its product as the
healthiest breakfast in India. Though, the Kellog’s breakfast does not give the feeling of
fullness as the Indian breakfast does.
Centre for Science in The Public Interest filed a complaint against the advertisement of
Happy Meals toys of McDonald. Court found that campaign devote first preference to happy
meal toy. Also, as per cost information shared into evidence by McDonald in 2005, non
edible element (packaging and toy) of meal was greater than its cost for happy meal food.
CSPI (2010) alleges that “By advertising that Happy Meals include Toys, McDonald’s
unfairly and deceptively markets directly to children”.
Marketers used various ways to promote food products by using stealth strategy while
targeting children. Companies used sponsored actors using their product and launch the
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advert as featuring them as the user of their product. ‘Apple’ laptop is used by celebrities in
many movies which ranked Apple as a premium brand in the consumer’s group. Tourist
places are also promoted in movies as highlighting the scenic beauty or culture of those
places. Companies conduct stealth practices by not sharing the real feed-back of those places.
In the Bollywood movie “Yeh Jawani hai Diwani”, highlighted Shimla as the tough and
enjoyable trekking place, while the real shoot happened at some other spot of Himalaya
Mountains. These types of practices prove deceptive way of an organization to promote their
product or service in the consumer’s mind.
2.3 Impact of marketing on teenagers
“In United States of America, average teenager spends about 6 ¾ hours a day (38+
hours/week) using media—television, online movies, magazines, playing video games and
using the computer. The average child sees approximately 20,000 commercials in a year.
Advertisers spend over $40 billion each year on television commercials. By the time a child
is 18, he or she will have seen about 20,000 foods commercials. It is estimated that teenagers
between the ages of 13 and 19 spend $100 a week or $144 billion per year on clothing,
entertainment, and fast food” Jacquelyn Massey (2013).
In India, there are about 280 million aged between 15 and 34. Eighty million of them live in
urban areas. In India, Rs. 45,000 crore market depends on consumer electronics, twowheelers, readymade garments and accessories, soft drinks, processed foods, toiletries and
cosmetics comprises products from Among them nearly 27 per cent (or Rs 12,000 crore) of
the Rs 45,000 crore market depends and targets the young generation.
Teenagers have emerged as a savvy and sensitive customer today who wants to be aware of
the product or the service before they consume any of them. Teens are becoming the most
important, influential and judgmental segment in the market, as they are having the spending
power in their hand. They are playing a very strong role in family buying process. Marketers
are highly dependent on them as today’s teens are also having the power of online
communication. Companies are forming the different strategies to target this segment, as
teenagers are current and future consumer of their brand. Marketers used stealth techniques
from different modes of advertisement while targeting teenagers. Brand (2007) demonstrated
that “cognitive development mediates children’s understanding of television advertising and
their response to advertising”. Medical journal “Peaditrics”, reports that about 33 percent of
all teen smoking is linked to advertising. Teenagers easily imitate the advertisements which
they found interesting and linked.
CSPI and Marin Institute raised issues around stealth ads for alcohol. Indian Television
introduced MTV and Bindaas channels exclusively for teenagers. These channels starred
young generation in their scripts. MTV and Bindaas channels are successful in creating an
image to teens as how they should look, dressed or behave. Companies are using many
stealth strategies to promote different brands in their daily soap opera by sponsoring the
products of their brands. The messages of stealth are being structured with a covered and
designed packaging to prove it real. Companies strike on imaginary though of the teenagers,
where consumer won’t be able to separate between the right and wrong information of
advertisement. Bhattacharya, Saha & Dey (2012) concluded that for “pleasure and sign value
influences brand loyalty significantly and today’s teen world innovation seems to be the key
to ensuring continuous patronage”.
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Marketers introduced few websites purely dedicated to teenagers as Limeroad.com,
loveculture.com, ranker.com, shopnineteen.com etc. These websites are having exclusively
branded collection only for teenagers to target teenagers online. Teenagers instantly access
information that is available online and share them with their friends and groups almost
instantaneously, discuss issues, like or dislike someone’s opinion and write or shoot one’s
reaction that will spread across that individual’s virtual world.
In today’s digital media, teenagers are often available at internet. Companies can easily post
their advertisements from different modes of communication on online medium. Teens are
highly enthusiastic towards the new technology. Marketers bang on dynamism skill of
teenagers to manipulate them by spreading the packed advertisement. The paper aims to
feature stealth marketing practices of the marketers to create an illusion in the mind of
teenagers of the brand.
3. Research method
The study uses content analysis, which is described as the scientific study of the content of
communication. Kerlinger (1986) defines, “Content analysis as a systematic method to
analyze the content and treatment of communication”.
3.1 Research objective
1. To understand the Stealth Marketing Strategy.
2. To understand how companies are using Stealth Marketing Strategy
3.2 Research question
1. How companies manipulate teenagers by using Stealth Marketing Strategy
2. How Teenagers perform the actions sought out by companies.
3.3 Data collection and analysis
The three advertisements were selected randomly from Indian television channel adverts.
Each advertisement was unique. Each of them used different ways of Stealth Marketing from
the other. This way, the study also brings out the flexibility of the Stealth marketing where
one can choose the way one wants to run the adverts to generate revenue. Social networking
service was also studied which targets teenagers by using Stealth Marketing Techniques.
4. Data presentation and analysis
4.1 Indian television adverts used stealth marketing strategy
4.1.1 Fair and lovely anti marks cream
Fair and lovely considered as the leading fairness cream in India. The brand holds a
commanding 50-70 per cent share of the skin whitening market in India, a market that is
valued at over Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) and growing at 10-15 per cent per annum as per
survey conducted by rediff.com in the year 2007. Unilever/Hindustan Unilever (HLL) spent
huge investment on advertisement and promotional activities of product. The brand launched
its Fair and lovely Anti Marks Cream which targets teenagers. The product aired its first
television advertisement in 2012.
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4.2 Advertisement Script
A teenager is praying for fewer pimples to God, as she feels ashamed showing a pimpled face
to her friends. She opens her palms and begging to save her from too much pimples to god,
Her sibling gifted Fair & Lovely Anti Marks Cream and tease her that to remove your
pimples don’t disturb god and use Fair & Lovely Anti Marks Cream. Further the
advertisement shows the different stages of brighter and no pimple face of the teenager. The
advertisement ends with the clean face of teenager with the tagline “Ab pimple marks bhool
jao”.
4.3 Interpretation
The advertisement flaunted on the success of the user who got desired dream after its usage in
the mentioned duration. Fairness cream contains many dangerous compounds which may
lead to skin diseases. As the skin color is based on melanin produced. The advertisement,
received a public outcry on ethical and moral ground of the same. Fair & Lovely is not
clinically proved, yet the aired television advertisements of Fair & Lovely compare the result
of a product from dermatologist treatment. This way of promoting the product leads to stealth
techniques by not sharing the correct information to the consumer. Female teenagers are very
receptive towards the repetitive advertisements. The product gets aired frequently on the
Indian television. Marketers used persuasion technique to promote Fair & Lovely products.
The product raised racism in the generation which generates discrimination among the black
and white. These fairness creams are not able to conduct their CSR rightly by ignoring the
ethical rules of their promotional activities.
4.4 Coka Cola “Sprite”
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation, manufacturer,
retailer and marketer of non-alcoholic drinks. Coca Cola entered in Indian Market in 1950.
Coca Cola is one of the leading soft-drink till 1993. The Official website of Coca Cola states
that the system in India has already invested $2 billion since 1993, till 2011. It will be further
investing another $5 billion till 2020. Currently Coca Cola is producing 22 soft-drink in
Indian Market. Coca Cola touched all segments of India from its soft-drinks. Company
introduced “Sprite” in 1999 which targets teenagers.
4.5 Advertisement script
The TVC starts with the conversation between two old women who are not been able to get
any space in the parking area. The moment they got one parking lot, one other car driver
caught the parking space intentionally and gives teasing look to the women. The three
teenager’s boys standing near to the parking space are watching whole scene. Among them,
one teenager sipped the sprite and showed sudden change in his facial expression with more
confidence. The boy moved towards the security of hotel and asked to announce for one car
no. Security announced the car no to come immediately at the hotel gate. The same man
comes to the venue and the old women got the parking space. The ad ends with the tagline
“Sab clear hai”.
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4.6 Interpretation
The advertisement was quite catchy as the boy is trying to support old lady. The
advertisement flaunted on awaking the inherent quality of to be cool and supportive.
Marketers tried to create an image as to be simple, cool and naughty, teens should follow
sprite. Coca cola also launched ‘Uncontainable campaign’ to promote Sprite's, where it
highlights passion points of teens in the year 2013. Sprite is another form of carbonated Soda.
Coca Cola is being criticized for its product ingredients in the market. In this advertisement,
brand is not revealing the side effect of Sprite. The Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE) conducted lab test of the product. They found that Coca Cola products are having high
amount of toxin, which may lead to cancer and other health issues. When these types of
product target teens, company hide the real the information and only focus on creating a
brand image of BE COOL. Carbonated Soda as ‘Sprite’ also encourages diabetes and obesity
issues in teenagers. Marketers also used product placement of this product in different Indian
movies which encourage youth to buy the brand.
4.7 VEET hair removal cream
Veet hair removal cream is manufactured by Reckitt Benckiser. The brand is a trademark of
leading depilatory products. Veet is sold in more than 50 countries. Earlier it was named as
‘Neet’. In India, Veet is having two major variants in India, i.e. Veet wax strips and Veet Hair
Removal Cream. According to sources from leading strategic research firm Euromonitor
International, market share of Veet was almost 23% in India. Reckitt Benckiser launched in
2004 its depilatory products in India. The advertisement of Veet brand received lots of
criticism in many countries in 2014 due to its marketing strategies. In Feb 2015, bollywood
actress Shraddha Kapoor became the new brand ambassador of Veet in India. The brand
launched its new Veet hair removal cream which targets young females. The product aired its
new television advertisement in Sep 2015 starring Shraddha Kappor.
4.8 Advertisement script
A young girl screamed ouch while doing shaving of her legs from razor. Her young room
partner (Shraddha Kappor) stopped her doing this and starts singing the jingle where she is
mentioning the usage of the hair removal cream. The melody of the jingle is “You are not the
boy, and that’s not the toy, so why this razor, you don’t have a moustache, nor a beard so
why this razor, that’s so weird. The girl replied to Shraddha, ‘but I have got hair everywhere,
I’m like a bear, so I don’t care’ Shraddha started jinling, ‘don’t shave it, you see your
stubble?,it just killed the bubble, cause your hair is so poky ,don’t shave it, Just VEET it,
VEET is all you need, just apply it, leave it and rinse it after five minutes and tell me how it is.
If you got Veet – that’s all you need. So girls , don’t shave it Just Veet it.” The advertisement
shows gives the mini demonstration of application of Veet. The advertisement ends with the
tagline “Don’t shave it- Just Veet it.
4.9 Interpretation
The commercial raised an issue of being shameful if you are having hair on your body. The
advert highlighted those hairs suits only on men rather than on women. So to be more
feminine one has to be clean without hairs. Adverts used unethical practices by raising the
issue of being womanly. Veet advertisements creates gender stereotype Hair removal cream
contains many chemical compounds which may burn, rash, or give permanent mark to skin.
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The commercial received lots of criticism by promoting the product which creates gender
issues in teenagers. Veet commercials received online protest for their new concept of
defining unshaven women as masculine. Also the commercial was not giving the correct
information of its chemical component which may lead to several skin problem later in
teenagers. The product gets aired frequently on the Indian television. Veet also received
many criticisms by not sharing the side effect of skin discolouration,
4.10 Organizations use stealth marketing
Many organizations pushed Stealth Marketing from their online products. The best example
would be of Facebook. Facebook celebrated their 11th birthday in Feb 2015. Facebook keeps
introducing new button on its link to connect users. There are 92 millions Facebook users in
India, among this nearly 11 % are below age 18 and 45 % are between the age group of 19 to
45 (Dazeinfo 2014). The idea behind . Companies are using deceptive ways to promote their
product on facebook. Companies link their marketing of brand from single click of user.
Facebook conducted online marketing and word of mouth publicity to the consumers.
Organization may also link their website, brand, product without any cost. This gives
organization an opportunity to capture bulk users easily.
4.11 Idea
Users create their group and discuss on any brand on that group. User invites their friends to
like and share the same page. In this way, group expands and the fan follower of the same
brand increases. Sometimes company hired users to create a group. The sponsored user post
advantages of the product. In this way the page becomes viral. Generating resources for their
social projects was not a concern. What is apparent is the need to get the masses involved in
their causes and create awareness and consequently enhance their brand image.
4.12 Interpretation
Organizations are realizing that once people align themselves with a brand to create a cool
image, then they take it upon themselves to spread the word in their virtual communities. In
this way, the idea of companies is to get the masses involved in their products and create
awareness and consequently enhance their brand image. Facebook use stealth marketing by
not making consumer aware about the importance of one click on its page button. Also
Facebook didn’t disclose their association of brand with one single click. Companies use
stealth marketing from different buttons of Facebook. Companies also keep uploading good
images, videos. Brands also create groups to promote their product from the employee of the
company, though brands don’t reveal the real association of the group admin with the
company. Companies use social networking services to create a buzz in the market. Social
networking sites make messages viral easily and create an image in the consumer’s mind.
5 Summary of findings, conclusion and recommendation
5.1 Summary of findings
Marketers have tried to delude the consumers by not giving them the correct information.
Now, marketers used stealth marketing very frequently via all the different modes of
communication to create the awareness of their brand. Companies draft the advertisement as
it looks more real, trustworthy and authentic. All characters following the product are
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sponsored in stealth marketing. The goal of stealth marketing is to create awareness and raise
the immediate trading of the product. The all scenes are crafted in such a way as the
consumer find it more connected. Organizations used a multi-pronged strategy for their
campaign and used all media to spread the message viral.
When marketers used stealth marketing to target teenagers, it creates more unethical practices,
as this segment is more responsive towards the advert. Now the traditional form of
advertisement doesn’t work for teenagers. Teenagers found more association with the new
trend of advertisement where they are able to link themselves with the product. This
generation is more materialistic and reactive towards the advertisement. Marketers try to
strike on this chord of teenagers and make the adverts more related to them. Organization
blurred the ethical lines and tried to bluff with the original picture of the product by faking it
with the incomplete data. From print media to online media, stealth marketing is used
vigorously to promote their product.
5.2 Conclusion
Marketing Communication is not only value proposition and revenue generation, but it is a
conversation between marketer and consumers. When the marketing communication is
directed to the teenage segment, it should be well analyzed and checked as this segment
cannot differentiate between the message and usability of the product. When it comes to
Marketing Communication to teenagers, there should be high standard of social responsibility.
Stealth marketing can be legally accepted, but marketers must follow the ethically accepted
adverts when it target teenagers.
5.3 Scope and limitation
The study could have revealed many more aspects of different categories of adverts focusing
on Stealth Marketing Techniques to manipulate teenagers. The paper only deals with a small
sample size . Reinard (2001) mentioned that, ‘content analysis is only descriptive research
and cause and effect relationships cannot be drawn. The results drawn are researcher’s
findings and interpretations are done on the basis of mentioned samples.
5.4 Recommendation
Companies must follow the ethical guidelines by sharing all the genuine information of their
product. This may lead to make the brand more trustworthy in the market and in the
consumer’s mind. It is very easy to connect with the consumers with the technology.
Marketer must share their information with the feedback form of their product. It will help
the brand to understand the consumer requirement. Companies can use social media as a tool
to conduct research to gather the correct information and demand of the teenagers. Ethical
boards must draft amendment for companies for following the ethical rule while targeting
teenagers. The paper concludes with the identification of the role of stealth marketing in
manipulating teenagers.
6. References
1. Bhattacharya D., Saha D., Dey S., (2012), Predicting Brand Loyalty and Product
Involvement Behavior of Indian Teenagers Incorporating the Moderating Effect of
Brand Influence Score. World Journal of Social Sciences, 2(1), 99 54-73.
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