What is stealth marketing?

Stealth marketing is the practice of promoting goods or services without disclosing the relationship between the person doing the promoting and the business that offers the good or service.

Stealth marketing is a guerrilla marketing tactic that is similar to buzz marketing: however, a key difference is that with stealth marketing consumers are completely unaware that they being marketed to.

For example bloggers often write about new products, but they don’t always tell whether they’re getting paid to blog about the product.

Another example, when Sony Ericson Mobile Communication Company wanted to promote a new camera-cell phone, they created the ‘fake tourist’ campaign, Young attractive couples posed as tourist in popular vacation spots around United States.

They asked passerby to snap their photo with phone. The chance encounter became a moment to generate interest and buzz about the product.

Stealth marketing and advertising takes many forms. It can be actresses placed in strategic locations with conspicuously branded shopping bags openly discussing a new brand that’s the next big thing. It can be company boxes placed around the locations with a ‘delivery man’ commenting on how busy he’s been delivering this brand lately.

Today, stealth marketing is quite common online – not just on blogs, but also on sites that allow customers to post reviews and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
What is stealth marketing?