From the conclusion on our discussion on undercover marketing it seems as if the general attitude towards it is pretty negative. Undercover marketing implies some kind of ulterior motive on behalf of the “agent” attempting to sell the product, and the fact that ordinary people are doing this in everyday situations threatens the nature of personal relationships, which many of us are uncomfortable with. However, the founder of BzzAgent, Dave Balter, claims that word-of-mouth advertising is not changing the social fabric. People in everyday situations talk about the products they like with friends and family; buzz advertising is merely an organized form of it, providing a way to gauge and interpret success (Walker, 9).
Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of a wide range of consumer goods including personal care, food items, laundry detergents, etc., has fully embraced word-of-mouth marketing, incorporating a buzz advertising division within their own company. Unlike BzzAgent, where companies hire them to produce campaigns, P&G operates these advertising campaigns themselves. In October of 2005, consumer group Commercial Alert filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Tremor, the word-of-mouth marketing campaign for teens created by P&G, claiming the inevitability of the “commercialization of human relations” as Tremor members are not required to identify themselves as agents (“I Sold it Through the Grapevine,” Business Week Article, May 29, 2006).
Being a former Tremor member, I wasn’t fully convinced that the practice was evil, nor was I fully convinced that it’s perfectly fine. However, my opinion might be swayed by my experiences with Tremor. As the Business Week article points out, most P&G products are not aimed towards teenagers and that’s why 80% of Tremor’s campaigns have been for outside clients (“I Sold it Through the Grapevine, Business Week Article, May 29, 2006).
I remember my first “assignment” arriving in the mail. Inside the kit were pamphlets and rubber bracelets advocating teens to drink milk. I was given about ten bracelets to distribute along with the pamphlets listing the reasons why teens should drink more milk and how much to drink. While everybody has seen their favorite celebrities donning the milk mustache in the Got Milk? Ads, I didn’t particularly find it cool or interesting to distribute these bracelets and pamphlets. Agents are required to report to Tremor not long after they receive their kits, and after expressing my reluctance to participate eventually I was given less and less assignments.
Even though I was eventually dropped by Tremor, I didn’t have any bitter feelings. In the article by Rob Walker, some agents cite having the “upper hand” in social relations as the reason for participating and for others participation improved their social skills. When I first signed up with Tremor, what allured me to the program was the prospect of trying new products for free, sometimes days right after they hit the stores, and getting free pre-screenings of movies and TV shows.
In addition, many of the brands under P&G are brands that I use daily and trust. The prospect of trying new products from my favorite brands for free was definitely a perk. Besides, I already rave to my friends about the products that I use, so things wouldn’t be any different.
Furthermore, if Tremor sent me a product that I didn’t like, I wasn’t compelled to spread the word about it, and could even give feedback to the company. In fact, sometimes I would speak negatively to friends and family about a product that I received if I felt it was truly horrible.
However, I can understand the stance of those who feel as if the corporations are using them, making them do the work that the corporations are supposed to, and in some cases employing tactics to do so. In a video that features Tremor employees, the concept of consumer ownership is brought up. In this video, the account manager for Tremor claims that the program allows consumer to weigh in on the brands, giving them opportunities to give feedback on products, ads, etc. In turn these members feel a kind of ownership, which drives them to promote the items with greater determination.
However, the extent to which these members actually have ownership over these products and ads is questionable. The issue of consumer choice appears. It may seem as if consumers actually have a choice when a wide selection of brands and variations of one kind of item exists. But their choices are limited to what is before them. The multiplicity of a certain item gives off an impression of choice, when in reality there is not much difference between one brand and another.
An illusion of ownership can be applied towards Tremor’s claims. If members are asked to choose within a set of different ads for a certain product, a sense of ownership can develop. The members might feel as if they played a role in the production of the ad when in reality they were just asked to choose between a couple of specific, predetermined choices. However, this impression of ownership drives them to promote the item that they feel they helped produce. And who wouldn’t want people to buy something they helped create?
The companies do not even have to take their opinions into consideration. But the fact that they were asked to give their opinions and see the products before they are finalized is ownership enough. In this way companies can create an emotional connection between the agents and the products, causing the agents to more willingly advertise the products.
Furthermore, after reading about the practices of BzzAgents, I feel as if there is a line in buzz marketing. Word-of-mouth advertising is ok when the “agent” feels strongly about the product they are advertising. Reading up on the “key points” of a novel and posting a review on a website is misleading and should not be done. The social fabric is not changed if somebody is raving about a product that they genuinely like and believe works. However, when individuals are actually promoting products they are unfamiliar with and would actually never use themselves, the line has been crossed.
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