Will Stealth Create the Wealth?

You are sitting at a Café Coffee Day a tall smart guy walks carelessly to your table drops his mobile phone carelessly on the table and orders for a coffee. You notice that it’s a very famous brand that has been recently released into the market. You look at the brand and you look at him. He gets a call and he says into the phone “Wait a minute! I will send you the file right now! Don’t let this account go off hand.” He opens his cell phone to reveal a big LCD screen. He keys in the mail and sends it across to him, while you look at him with your eyes wide.

He smiles at you and says “Great phone! Keeps me mobile all the time. You know this sales job! You gotta collaborate fast and work. The guys at the desk need info fast, you delay the info and you lose the account. But with this I can collaborate with my team as fast. I have never lost a deal since I have this. Its expensive but you can get your investment back by improving your collaborative ability.” He sees you are interested and asks “Wanna see how it works?” you nod your head and he goes on carefully explaining the features of the product and the services offered by different service providers. What’s more, he sends an email to you giving you the address and telephone number of the dealer and the service providers right away from his phone.

You go to the website indicated in the e-mail, which gives you more product details. The website offers you a free gift if you forward their page to ten other friends who might be interested in the product. You fill the names and get your free gift. You just cant believe your luck! Just a chance meeting earned you a small prize. You shoot off a mail to your buddies indicating your experience and you keep talking about it for a week. Congratulations! You have just been a part of the “Viral Marketing” campaign by a very smart marketing organization!

What I have just described is a technique of “Under Cover Marketing” or “Stealth Marketing”. The very hot buzz in the Marketing Street. The one whom you have met is not the ordinary sales guy, who walks up to you and irritates you with his manners and pleads you to listen to his message. Then, either out of sympathy or because you have no other choice, you accept to listen to his message and then decline to buy whatever he is trying to sell you. This chap is one smart guy. He knows how to identify the right prospect, what exactly should be the set up that would interest him/her, where this prospect usually could be found out, what would lure him/her into a conversation and so on. Apart from that, the Internet and the company’s advertising complete the campaign and convert the interest into buy. Whoever said that in the AIDA model (The standard model followed in personal selling) all the stages have to be carried out by a single sales man at the same instance of time.

The guy at the café gets your Attention to the product and raises your Interest, the website maintains your Interest in it and through the email contact the organization can trace that you are the guy who met their sales guy at the café and may give you a preferred customer status and offer you a special offer that stimulates your Desire to buy and propels you towards Action. And in the entire game, the consumer is left with the feeling that a “Chance” meeting has given him/her a golden opportunity. No personal selling effort has ever been more successful.

The type of approach followed above, can be effective in the short-run for organizations. The question is will it lead to long-term result? Will it stand as a standard technique in the industry based on which organizations can build their “Brand Equity”? Or is it just another “fad” which would stay for a while and leave the market place. To answer these questions we have to examine a few facts related to marketing and the perception of it in the society.

The first issue we need to examine is “Why this approach?” There are several reasons why such a “stealth” approach has to be adopted by organizations. First, in general the society has grown skeptical about the traditional marketing communications which come through mass-media[1]. Second, the public has in general lost interest in commercials, which is visible in the “zipping” and “zapping” behavior of consumers while watching television and reading newspapers. Third, the media explosion has made the audience fragmented across several networks and channels[2]. Fourth, growing consumer awareness about marketing activity has lead to law that governs advertising and the promises that are made to the consumers through advertising. Fifth, technological developments such as the invention of “Digital Video Recorder” and brands such as TiVo have furthered the difficulties of marketers in reaching the target audience with marketing messages[3].

Thus from the developed world there have been a lot of alternative techniques for reaching the consumer with marketing messages. Non-traditional approaches like “Word of Mouth”, “PoP Sales messages”, “Buzz Marketing” etc., have been made use of by different marketers and brand builders over a period of time. Belonging to the same category of responses is “Stealth Marketing” or “Under Cover Marketing” or “Viral Marketing”. The primary motive in all the three approaches (which might vary slightly from each other) is hiding of the information from the consumer that the communication that is happening is actually a marketing communication[4].

The second issue we need to examine is “Will this approach stand?” There has been a lot of theoretical support from several researchers for this approach[5]. Moreover the increased use of this approach by marketers with some success has shown to the marketing community about the usefulness of this approach. Therefore, we can see that more and more organizations are devising one or the other form of Under Cover Marketing techniques from time to time. The increased use suggests that this approach is preferred by the industry and hence would stay for a long while to come. Moreover, the approaches cannot be copied, since the very definition of this approach says that one has to hide the marketing intent behind the messages. Thus, a given technique once used, cannot be used again in the same way at the same place with the same type of consumer again and again.

The third issue we need to examine is “Will the consumers love and accept such experiences?” The impact of stealth marketing on consumers once they come to know that they have been subject organized marketing communication has to be estimated. The consequences of such actions, when positive would lead to increased “trust” with the customer. Negative reactions and responses of consumers would lead to consumer activist organizations taking up this issue not only to increase consumer awareness but also to bring forth the technique under the cover of regulatory framework. Thus, the marketing community would be trusted lesser than before and would be forced to employ resources in search of newer approaches to gain the consumer back into the “trust area”. The experiences of organizations are varying in this aspects. Some organizations have experienced increased trust with the consumer groups while some have had to apologize sheepishly for such actions. For instance Burger King in the USA had to stop its “Cock Fight” campaign because of consumer activist action[6]. The issue needs serious examination as the number of cases “for” and “against” under cover approach are piling in every day.

References:
1. “The image of marketing – splendid… or plain awful?”, Business World, 1st August 2005, Pp. 44.
2. “Marketing to the No Logo generation”,Nirmalya Kumar and Sophie Linguri, Business World, 1st August 2005, Pp. 68.
3. “CSR and Marketing Communications – A case of stealth marketing”, Roy Langer, scholar.google.com, Pp. 4.
4. “Undercover Marketing – The method which lies beneath”, Karolina Stenberg and Sabina Pracic, Bachlor’s Thesis, Jonkoping International Business School, Pp.24
5. Langer, R. (2003). New Subtle Advertising Formats: Characteristics, Causes and Consequences. In Hansen, F. & Bech Christensen, L. (Eds.), Branding and Advertising (pp. 232-265). Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.
6.“Undercover Marketing – The method which lies beneath”, Karolina Stenberg and Sabina Pracic, Bachlor’s Thesis, Jonkoping International Business School, Pp.21

Long Desired Move

I had thought about this long back. Wanted the world to know about what i think and do in marketing. Formal research is alright, but there are several issues that require informal thinking before formalizing them. Some ideas cannot be expressed in formal language though and i wish to share them on this blog. Let me see what i would be doing in the near future.