Murketing

Rob Walker coined the term blending the words "murky" and "marketing" to define the hedgy and edgy blurring of the lines of product advertising. In yesterday's edition of Slate, the concept was discussed in an article titled, Things are not what they stream which highlighted the infamous cell phone popcorn video.



The video turned out to be part of a viral marketing campaign for the manufacturer of wireless headsets. One part clever, one part fear-mongering equals marketing (or "murketing") brilliance in increased brand name recognition and sales. Mike at Ship's Biscuit categorizes viral marketing patterns in a fairly comprehensive list. The cell phone popcorn video seems to fall under number 8, "WTF? How do they do that?"

Then you have the marriage of viral video and product placement in this Sprint YouTube Payola campaign. Ah, remember the good ol' days when advertisers interrupted our programs with commercials? Now they're getting us to make the commercials for them! It's a trend that makes traditional product placement look quaint in comparison.

Take it one step further and instead of "real people" making ads, they BECOME ads ala this Chicago Tribune story about B.M.O.C. aka "Big Marketeer on Campus."

And I thought the GAP ads on the sides of buildings were a bit much...