Stealth marketing is the term used for large companies or corporations who create marketing scheme’s based on the consumer generated information they would like to see. Meaning, creating a fake blog to post information about their own product or service. That blog, would be acting as a consumer or customer (even though it is really the company doing this themselves), and obviously giving the product or service a positive review. This is a good example for stealth marketing. Some refer to stealth marketing as guerrilla marketing as well. This also uses the same meaning, although guerrilla takes on the more “illegal” and “outgoing” personalities of a marketing scheme. But why is this so bad?

When you hear about Word of Mouth Marketing, the definition of this type of marketing mainly deals with one friend telling another about a product or service. Although it has moved digitally, meaning that word of mouth marketing can happen over the internet, with the introduction of blogging and web instant messaging (much like twitter.com). These stealth marketers act as the other friend, but in this case, your friend that you are listening to, is fake. This raises the issue of, “is the product actually good?” Or is the stealth marketer trying to spam you and sell you on a product or service that won’t benefit you. As we all know a happy customer is your best advertisement.

So why does this make a company look so bad? When a large corporation or even a smaller business decides to take on stealth marketing, it puts a very negative view on the company. Why would such a large or even a positive small business, need to take on this type of marketing if their product was actually good? This is the question that many raise when they find out which companies are doing stealth marketing. While some Web sites use this “leak” of stealth marketing as a way to build buzz. We all must understand that this type of marketing will be there no matter what we do. Could it be a conspiracy theory? Possibly. Could it be something marketeers just over analyze? Possibly.