Scary Yet True
Have you ever heard of undercover advertising?
Today in class the Professor was discussing that and he showed us a clip that explains more about the topic. Let me tell you it’s pretty damn disgusting.
Here’s how it works, some companies, small and big will hire people from all ages depending on their product audience, the way they market is they give the product to those individuals that they hire and send them to crowded public places like coffee shops.
They use their product in front of the public for instance; Sony advertised their camera phone through giving it to a good looking couple. This couple would go to the crowded streets and pretend that they are tourists so they ask all those rich/ business men that are walking on their way to work, they ask them to take a picture of them and ask the people isn’t this cool phone? If the people like it the couple would ask them for their email address of which they will send them the information of the product. In other words, deception is the key for this advertising, instead of coming on the customer as a salesman or advertiser they deceive him/her to like their products without putting pressure on the customer to buy the product or not.
What do you think of this kind of advertising?
I think it’s very deceptive and just make me trust no one out there.
here’s the proof
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October 20, 2004 - 1:10 am
Usually when most people are bombarded with ads, they’ll end up totally ignoring them. (Take pop-up ads for instance…) So if everyone catches on to this type of advertising, are they going to start ignoring every day people if they’re using some new product?? I have to say that this is kind of clever, but then I realized what it would lead to…
October 20, 2004 - 9:45 am
I don’t see anything wrong with it. I’d personally rather have this than a pushy salesman who won’t leave me alone.
October 20, 2004 - 12:43 pm
I think is disgusting… but at the same time one of the things I cannot stand about sales is that most of the time there is some element of deception.
October 21, 2004 - 6:40 am
Well I’m against this, it may be effective, but it’s a lie, which is no good and the negative results are more than the positive results. On the other hand I hate the nagging of pushy salesmen. So I personally believe they should leave people in peace, either a salesman who’s not pushy, or TV, newspaper and internet ads. This “undercover advertising” is to me, not acceptable.
October 23, 2004 - 10:35 am
We may not like it, but these types of things will never go away. Everyone needs to make a living. Sales/advertising are a big part of the economy and they’ll only come up with more and more ways to get your $$.