Stealth Marketing Goes Mainstream

The next time you see a campus opinion leader or Hollywood star driving a certain type of car, drinking a soda, or talking about the merits of some product or service, realize that he or she may be being paid to promote the item. While not a com

pletely new idea, the use of nonconventional methods of getting products promoted appears to almost be becoming conventional. Referred to by a variety of titles including stealth marketing, ambush marketing, and guerrilla marketing, these "under-the-radar" methods attempt to get exposure for products or services in a number of ways at the lowest cost. For smaller companies stealth marketing may be the only form of communications they can afford, so this means of communication is a necessity. But now many of the larger advertisers have also adopted the approach.

One of the more popular brands in Britain is Colman's Mustard. Founded 188 years ago, Col-man's has successfully employed under-the-radar tactics since the 1920s, when its advertising agency initiated the idea of a fictitious "mustard club." The campaign started with the agent himself pasting stickers on buses that read, "Has father joined the mustard club?" The campaign caught on very quickly with Brits and eventually expanded into an integrated campaign that included a club members' newsletter, card games, and badges (500,000 badges were distributed in 1933 alone!). The success of the campaign led Colman's to be the top-selling mustard by 1938, and it has remained a brand leader ever since, although it is now owned by Unilever.

In the United States, a number of brands that have become successful through more conventional advertising approaches are also attempting to capitalize on the stealth approach. For example, Revlon paid ABC to include its cosmetics as part of the plot on the soap opera All My Children. Calvin Klein's $45 million launch of the men's cologne Crave will include street sampling, "seeding"—having designated opinion leaders be seen with and talk about the brand— and sand sculptures of the logo on beaches on both coasts. Sony Ericsson hired troupes of actors to pose as tourists in New York City and Los Angeles to ask passers-by to take their picture with the company's new combination cell-phone camera. Procter & Gamble sent elaborate Porta Potties to state fairs to promote Charmin toilet paper, and Elle magazine (among others) has hired individuals to log on to Internet chat rooms and talk about its product. And this is just a sampling!

Like many other things, however, overuse creates problems. Many consumers and businesspeo-ple consider the practice of stealth marketing deceptive, arguing that such practices attempt to trick the consumer. Some have even fought back. One such group is the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of international soccer ("football" to most of the world). During the 2002 World Cup the agency took on the role of policing unauthorized promotions at the games in South Korea. Pushed by Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Philips Electronics—all of whom paid $35 million to $40 million to be official sponsors, the "cops" clamped down on competitors that attempted to gain exposure to the estimated 40 billion TV viewers through stealth methods. One such effort—according to FIFA, but denied by the company—was that by Samsung. At one game more than 100 Chinese spectators were adorned in bright red hats with a logo of South Korea's Samsung electronics prominently emblazoned on them. The police made them remove the hats prior to entering the stadium, as Samsung just happens to be a competitor of sponsor Philips Electronics. At another game, more than thirty 10-meter-long banners were confiscated, each trying to promote companies ranging from electronics to car-repair shops.

While some success was achieved at the World Cup games, the reality is that stealth methods are on the rise and are almost impossible to stop. And not everyone believes that they should be stopped. As noted by Salim Ahmed of Marketing, a London business magazine, stealth may be the only future marketing has—at least for some companies.

Sources: Daniel Eisenberg, "It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World," Time Magazine, Sept. 2, 2002, pp. 38-41; Gabriel Kahn, "Stop That Logo!" The Wall Street Journal Europe, June 21-23, 2002, p. N1; "Colman's Mustard," Marketing, Aug. 1, 2002, p. G19; Salim Ahmed, "Stealth May Be the Only Future Marketing Has," Marketing, Nov. 2, 2000, p. 32.

The stealth marketing techniques discussed in the lead-in to this chapter reflect the many different ways (some unconventional) that companies and organizations get their messages out. Ads have also appeared on manhole covers, inside rest-room stalls, on lettuce wrappers in grocery stores, on hubcaps, on cell phones, and even on beepers. In this chapter, we review a number of support media, some that are new to the marketplace and others that have been around a while. We discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages, cost information, and audience measurement of each. We refer to them as support media because the media described in the previous chapters dominate the media strategies of large advertisers, particularly national advertisers. Support media are used to reach those people in the target market the primary media may not have reached and to reinforce, or support, their messages.

You may be surprised at how many different ways there are to deliver the message and how often you are exposed to them. Let's begin by examining the scope of the support media industry and some of the many alternatives available to marketers.

Support media are referred to by several titles, among them alternative media, nonmeasured media, and nontradi-tional media. These terms describe a vast variety of channels used to deliver communications and to promote products and services. In this chapter we will discuss many of these media (though, as you might imagine, it would be impossible for us to discuss them all).

Many advertisers, as well as the top 100 advertising agencies, have increased their use of nontraditional support media, and as new alternatives are developed, this use will continue to grow. Figures for nontraditional media do not include some of the most popular support media, such as out-of-home advertising, specialty advertising, and advertising in the Yellow Pages. Let us examine some of these in more detail.

Out-of-home advertising encompasses many advertising forms, including outdoor (billboards and signs), transit (both inside and outside the vehicle), skywriting, and a variety of other media. While outdoor advertis-432 ing is used most often, as shown in Figure 13-1, the others are also increasing in use.

2001 Total Outdoor Expenditures: $5.3 Billion

Alternative Transit outdoor

Street furniture

Alternative Transit outdoor

Street furniture

Billboards

Billboards

Figure 13-1 Estimated gross billings by media category show that outdoor ads are still the most popular.

Source: OAAA.

Continue reading here: Advantages and Disadvantages of Outdoor Advertising

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