Keeping up with The Joneses: Stealth, secrets, and duplicity in marketing relationships

Stealth, or undercover, marketing involves the disguising of marketing communications that marketers undertake to purposefully influence their audiences without the audiences being aware of these activities. Inasmuch as stealth marketing involves secrecy (the withholding of information) and miscommu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Business horizons 2015-11, Vol.58 (6), p.591-598
Main Authors: Pehlivan, Ekin, Berthon, Pierre, Hughes, Mine Üçok, Berthon, Jean-Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business ethics
Communication
Disclosure
Duplicity
Ethics
Industrial Marketing
Industriell marknadsföring
Marketing
Misrepresentation
Motion pictures
Secrets
Stealth marketing
Studies
Undercover marketing
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Summary:Stealth, or undercover, marketing involves the disguising of marketing communications that marketers undertake to purposefully influence their audiences without the audiences being aware of these activities. Inasmuch as stealth marketing involves secrecy (the withholding of information) and miscommunication (the communication of partial or misleading information), it is at least on some level duplicitous. Duplicity is the double act of secrecy and misrepresentation. In this article we explore duplicity in marketing communications. Specifically, we deconstruct the movie The Joneses to explore the various ways in which both marketers and consumers employ duplicity in their communications—to each other and themselves. We conclude by exploring the ethical and functional issues duplicity raises, and suggest that irony is one way in which duplicity can be ethically and productively employed.
ISSN:0007-6813
1873-6068
1873-6068
DOI:10.1016/j.bushor.2015.06.002