Subtle and Deceptive: Marketing
Marketing is changing and becoming much more subtle.
Product placement is not a new concept – but how many of us are conscious of it? Did you notice in the last movie or TV show you watched what kind of computer they used, what pop they drank, etc. Where they brand names? Did it strike you that the company probably paid large sums of money to have their product featured? You can be sure that it did not just ‘happen’ to get caught on film.
Marketing isn’t just advertising anymore.
Here is new one: stealth marketing. Have you ever read book reviews on Amazon? How about consumer reviews on electronic sites? Do you think any of those are done by people being paid to state a positive or negative opinion? How would you know? You can read the confessions here of one such person: The Escapist. He talks about infiltrating online community forums, with multiple accounts, and after gaining respect in the community begins to hype a product. Others of his personas concur, and it looks like many agree – even though it is only one person doing it all! Would you be fooled?
Then there is this new on that turns my stomach: Funding ‘research institutes’ to a corporation’s advantage. Tabacco companies for years have denied that smokes was a health hazard, and are still working hard to convince people that second hand smoke or passive smoking is not a health hazard. They cannot directly point to studies in their favour, so they work by funding other organizations to say the information. Since there is lots of scientific research that shows smoke is harmful to all who breath it, they decided to attempt to discredit the results and scientists in general. If there is a lack of consensus among scientists regarding the danger of smoke, then people may become confused.
And hey, they seem to have hit on a brilliant idea. If they can show that in general, scientists have a hard time coming to a consensus, then they have an easier time to call into question any scientific study that is not in their favour. So it turns out that a major tabacco company is a major backer of ‘research institutes’ that continue to point to a lack of consensus on climate change.
The oil companies also fund these same kinds institutes. But in their press releases, which journalists dutifully quote to show a ‘balanced view’, no mention is made of their supporters.
This article fleshes this out much more fully: The Denial Industry
Do you trust marketing? Do you recognized when you are being marketed to?