'stealth' and 'buzz' marketing -suspiciously like some evangelism...

A day or several back I blogged about intstrumental friendship and evangelisem. Well, I reckon this story provides an interesting counterpoint. Here's the nub of the matter:

"And then the actors would pull out of their pocket some crumpled-up leaflet, which was for the text subscription service. They'd have a mobile phone in their pocket, and they'd show them how it worked. 'What's the harm in that?' they'd say. And they could have these conversations with lots of people - that was the beauty of it. Two people could spend maybe 20 minutes or half an hour in each pub, working the whole pub. We did it at two home games and reckon we got about 4,000 people on the petition in total."
The petition went in the bin, of course, but subscriptions to the club's texting service soared. "The week after we had done the activity it went up to 120 sign-ups," says Goodkind, who is also boss of the Frank PR agency. "Then you saw that after that it was 125, and the next week was 75, and the next week was 60. That was the talkability, because obviously if you get that service you tell your mates about it. We saw a massive effectiveness."

Now that marketeers appear to have learnt from the most dehumanising of evangelistic techniques, we have the chance now to see how it looks and I for one am ashamed of the company we could be said to keep. The gospel, if it is really good news, should not be about exploitative and sub-human techniques to propagate itself. In fact, quite the reverse. In a society where there is cynicism about advertising we should not be about marketting in this way but rather about loving relationality a la God. It may be true that viral marketting works, but there is a difference ethically and in turms of long-term results between marketting which is ultimately about products and relationships which are about support, commitment, love and openness. If we do the former we forsake the right to talk about the latter and undermine our own best intentions. The means and the ends are one, and the meaning of these is love. Genuine relationships have to be genuine relationships, not hit-and-run encounters.
Leo Benedictus on the rise of 'stealth' and 'buzz' marketing | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk: Filed in: marketting, stealth, buzz, corporations, advertising