How to con friends and influence people

There was a really interesting article in the Sunday Times Mag on the 4th about new forms of marketing entitled, 'How to con friends and influence people'. It described how advertising agencies are hiring actors to talk about their products in public places. For example, two actors were hired to sit and read the same book on a tube train and then start loudly discussing how great the book was. This sort of stunt is called Stealth Marketing.

Some readers may know that a new film is about to premier called 'The Joneses'. Demi Moore and David Duchovny star in this dark comedy about a seemingly perfect family that turn out to be paid actors, subtly advertising and promoting products to their friends, co-workers and neighbours. I can definately see this sort of situation happening for real in the near future. Its not much a progression from paying people to talk about your product on a train...

Here is a great example from Work Club for the Nokia N-Gage...

n-gage girlfriend from Alasdair Monk on Vimeo.