Welcome to the Sneak ADtack! Forum

Sneak ADtack! is a website dedicated to tracking and exposing marketing’s
hidden war on American consumers. We try to examine as wide a range of
stealth marketing as possible, from product placement and VNRs to buzz
marketing and branded content.

This Forum page is a sandbox for you – for your observations, analysis,
questions, comments, bitter recriminations.

We hope this space turns into a lively discussion of the benefits and costs
of stealth marketing, and we look forward to your contributions.

Thank you,
The Management

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Twitter MisAPPropriations and Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing”

by Taylor Wray

[The Sneak ADtack! post, Twitter’s MisAPPropriation of Your Private Data] seems akin to Facebook’s new “frictionless sharing” feature, which is clearly designed more for the benefit of data-sellers (Facebook itself) and data-users (market researchers/advertisers/media makers) than individual Facebookers.

More and more, you’ll be “sharing” content on your Facebook profile that you’ve simply watched, read, or listened to elsewhere online. And if you think these data-hounds will stop at tracking your media consumption, think again. Facebook has already added an “actions” category that will eventually allow auto-sharing of things you’ve purchased, places you’ve visited, sights you’ve seen, et cetera.

There are already big changes taking place due to this redefinition of “sharing” in social media. For instance, before Facebook could legally introduce the feature, it lobbied Congress to curtail consumer protections in the 1998 Video Privacy Protection Act, which used to firmly prohibit companies from publicizing customer video renting/watching habits.

Moreover, “frictionless sharing” is little more than a resurrection of Facebook’s legally dubious “Beacon” feature, which it tried to introduce and was immediately sued for just a few years back. See my blog post at The Daily Taylor for more about frictionless sharing and what it means for average users, as well as media marketers.

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These legal issues put stealth advertising in a whole new ball game!

by Gabriella McNevin

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has a new headline on their website today: “On March 1, 2013 Google plans to make changes to user privacy that will violate a 2011 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission. Today members of Congress are meeting with Google. Will they stop the company from violating your privacy?” [epic.org]

So Google wants to change user privacy settings and implement a system that will break government rules, and yet we (the “Google-it generation”) are wondering if Congress can stop them. Why wouldn’t Congress stop them? Is there something wrong with the 2011 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission?

I recently learned that there is no law in the U.S. Constitution that protects individual privacy, which makes these legality issues even more complicated! As Prof. Carroll said in Twitter’s MisAPPropriation of Your Private Data, “To be clear: Nothing is clear to users.”

Ugh. Freedom to share (or rather defining and limiting that freedom) seems as confusing as the Nation’s freedom of speech history!

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The Accidental Lube Salesman for Facebook

by Diana Tan

“A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.”

If you’ve shared an amusing anecdote or story with your friends on Facebook and written your own little witty and sarcastic line to accompany it, watch out. This line could be attributed to you… next to a picture of a 55-gallon drum of Passion Natural water-based lubricant; as a sponsored story, shown to all your Facebook friends in their newsfeed.

This was the life of Nick Bergus. This was his cute and witty comment. This was his sponsored story.

I think what’s scariest is the realization that this could happen to any one of us just as easily.  Facebook has taken the next step to evolve what we know as an ad, into stories, seamlessly integrating them effortlessly into our newsfeed. Sometimes we don’t even know when one has hit us.

It can be just as traumatizing to the reader as it is to the user. In November 2011, my Facebook news feed was deluged with notifications of how so and so had just read, “Sex with Animals can cause Penile Cancer.” Look, I know there’s nothing wrong with reading that. I know it’s not rational to flinch every time my eyes flicker toward those words. But there is such thing as too much information, too many times. At one point, that topic showed up on my screen three times. Overkill, much?

I’ll be the first to admit that social media fascinates me. Without it, I would not have known of the effects of bestiality, that I can buy President Obama’s birth certificate on a mug (check out his Timeline and scroll all the way down to when he was born), and that Snooki may be pregnant.

Social media and I have a love-hate relationship. While I’m more than happy to be on the receiving end of news, updates, and sponsored stories, I would much rather ignore the possibility that I too, could end up an accidental lube salesman like Mr. Nick Bergus.

So, how can I be sure my opinions, likes and follows won’t be published on Facebook as a sponsored story?

Well… I can’t. There’s no opt-out option for users. If I really wanted to, I would have to actively pursue and ‘de-activate’ sponsored stories by:

   Clicking ‘hide’ to remove individual stories
Limiting the volume of stories I see from a specific friend to only important posts.
Unfriending that friend or unliking the Page.

[via Facebook]

Not much of a solution, is it?

Originally posted on Blurban.org.

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Advertisers Don’t Want to Target You. They Want to Be Like You.

By Ashley Waxman, COM ’13

The traditional take on advertising, big bucks = big exposure, is so 2010.

These days, advertisers have more access than ever to information about you, your likes, dislikes, demographics – they even know if you’re pregnant. However, advertisers use this information not just tocreate targeted ads, but also to make themselves more like you. Infiltrating our lives as undercover agents, companies are blurring the line between fandom and sponsorship.

The Hunger Games hit theaters last month and has topped the box office charts since. Why is this movie so popular? The original books have been well received (more than 24 million copies of the trilogy have sold in the United States alone), but the buzz leading up to the movie was unprecedented. Lionsgate’s key tactic wasn’t just to market the movie with a big bang. The studio aligned itself with people who were already fans of The Hunger Games novels, and in a yearlong effort, developed fanfare online to foster and spread their excitement.

A recent New York Times article revealed that with a staff of just 21 people, Lionsgate implemented a detailed plan, including cultivating fan blogs. Instead of the fans creating their own means of connecting with each other, Lionsgate did the work for them. Fans participated in these “fan blogs” under the impression that they were created by a peer. Lionsgate also pushed heavy Facebook and Twitter campaigns, including a sweepstakes to send five winning fans to the movie set in North Carolina. Lionsgate did not involve the mass media in their promotions, negating any phoniness, so the fans were made to feel it was about them, not the hype.

But it was about the hype, and Lionsgate succeeded at mounting such buzz for The Hunger Games movie just by word-of-mouth marketing, letting the fans persuade each other to get involved and feel that they chose to be fans, not coerced into a marketing gimmick.

In his book Buying In, Rob Walker coined the term “murketing,” or the current practice of marketers blurring the lines of traditional sales and promotion tactics. Walker devotes an entire chapter to buzz marketing, a growing trend that employs everyday people to act as marketers in their day-to-day lives. Dubbed “the commercialization of chitchat,” buzz marketing is the essence of modern stealth advertising. Empower the consumers to think they themselves chose to become fans and are above the hype, when in fact, the company has been behind every exposure they’ve had to the product.

The unlimited channels of communication the Internet provides are only expanding companies’ means and motives to use you – as a fan, as a consumer, as a social media user. Companies like Lionsgate can explicate every bit of information about you available online to become what they know you want.  The expensive billboards and advertisements have gotten even smaller than the pop-up ads that bombard your Facebook screen. Companies now present themselves in the guise of your Facebook friend, your favorite blogger, or a fellow fan – and that’s stealthy.

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