Stealth marketing

I discovered stealth marketing (aka. buzz/undercover/covert marketing, or roach baiting) on an airline magazine the other day. Via Wikipedia:

Undercover marketing is a subset of guerrilla marketing where the consumer doesn't realize they're being marketed to. For example, a marketing company might pay an actor or socially adept person to use a certain product visibly and convincingly in locations where target consumers congregate. While there, the actor will also talk up their product to people they befriend in that location, even handing out samples if it is economically feasible. The actor will often be able to sell consumers on their product without those consumers even noticing it.

The particular example I read about happened over 3 years ago (so excuse that this is old news) - the US Sony Ericsson T68i camera phone campaign that hired actors to pose as tourists:

In one initiative, dubbed Fake Tourist, 60 trained actors and actresses will haunt tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle. Working in teams of two or three and behaving like tourists, the actors and actresses will ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures.

Presto: instant product demonstrations.

While searching for the above reference site, I stumbled on this related piece - 'everything is marketing' - over at the legendary Bitter Films.

You may also be familiar with the 'Polo Blow' viral ad featuring the Volkswagen Polo and suicide bomber, or Burger King's ' Subservient Chicken' from last year - both of which are, however, prime examples of viral marketing.

Think how much fun you could have when you realise you're the target of a shill...