So I became aware of a new stealth marketing group this weekend. They call themselves BzzAgents. Kind of insidious.
Basically, companies sign up with BzzAgent to do marketing campaigns. They then provide products to their BzzAgents (young people it seems) who, if they like the product, are then asked to visit forums like Amazon and make positive/glowing reports on the product. Thus creating "buzz".
So the problem seems obvious to me. These people don't identify themselves as compensated endorsers and thus have a higher score on the "believability index".
Boy.. it's getting so you can't trust anyone anymore.
Posted by artandscience at February 15, 2005 07:04 PMI've known about that group for a while. I'd like to think that I could spot somebody trying to sneakily market something to me. But I find the whole thing completely distasteful, and if anybody I knew turned out to be a bzzagent I'd drop them like a hot brick.
Honesty...you don't mess with that.
Posted by: Gary at February 15, 2005 11:58 PMYeah.. I caught the reference on Amazon while reading up on earbuds. One of the reviewers said, watch out about how some of these reviews seem very positive and others very negative. He said the positive ones could be BzzAgents. So.. my first introduction.
Guess I'm still living in a bit of a cultural backwater.. :>
Posted by: stefan at February 16, 2005 06:56 AM