Vocabulary in Context

Find a synonym for the underlined phrases in the sentences below.

1. Allowing soil drink manufacturers to put soda vending machines in public schools overtly encourages students to drink carbonated beverages.

2-3. Consumers have become quite jaded about advertising: their defenses go up even when an ad is clever or witty. To counteract this, some advertisers have adopted a new, covert strategy: they try to create advertising that promotes their products while staying under the consumer’s radar.

4. The film “Mad Hot Ballroom” has gotten a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth advertising because everyone who has seen it encourages other people to go.

5. The success of IPod has created a lot of buzz about Apple products in general.

6-8.Have you heard about the latest Internet scam? Skilled conmen send ATM cardholders e-mails that purport to be from the cardholders’ banks. The e-mails ask the bank customers to verify their PIN* numbers for security purposes. Playing right into the conmen’s hands, unsophisticated consumers reply with their PINs, which the con men then use to produce fake cards to use to withdraw money from the victim’s account. (PIN = personal identification number)

9. Sometimes the hype surrounding a new film is counterproductive since people can be quite disappointed when the movie does not live up to their expectations.

10. People in the focus group were horrified to learn that one of the participants had been “planted” in their midst to try to influence their thoughts on the product.

11. When a friend tells you about a new product he likes, you tend to believe him because you think he has your best interests at heart.

12. If you find out later that your friend is being paid to promote a certain product, you feel duped.

13-14. In undercover advertising, what looks like a chance encounter in a bar with someone who happens to tell you how great a certain brand of vodka is, can turn out to be a marketing ploy by a paid “agent” whose job it is to recommend the brand.

Use the following words to complete the story below. You may have to change the form of the word to complete the blanks grammatically.

Jaded, dupe, boost, undercover, word-of-mouth, masquerade, good Samaritan, devious, ethics, covert, promote, stealth, buzz, trendsetter, play into someone’s hand, agent, betray, volunteer, attract, pitch, backlash against,

I have a confession to make. I got a really cool job this summer, but it involved 1) _______________my friends. You see, a company called Bzz Marketing hired me to do some 2) ________ marketing of a new product called the iPhone. As a Bzz Marketing 3)_____________, my task was to use my iPhone in public everywhere I went: on the subway, on the bus, at parties, in the student center at Columbia, where I am a student. There were about fifty hip young 4) _________________ like myself who were hired to do this. (Most of my colleagues were really with it: you should have seen how cool they were!)

When someone asked about the new phone, our assignment was to show the person as many of the phone’s features as seemed natural and then 5)________to send them some information by e-mail. I was never supposed to mention the price of the phone; the idea was to create 6) ___________about the product, so that when the time came, people would be so 7) ____________to the iPhone, they would buy it without thinking too much about the cost. I was amazed by how many people just played 8) ______ _____ _____They thought I was just a9) ____________ ____________wanting to share some information about a cool new phone. Little did they know that 1 was 10) ___________product to them!

So why am I confessing? Well, it’s one thing to 11) a product to the general public while 12) _____________as a disinterested person; it’s quite another to be that 13) ________________with your friends. After several of my friends bought iPhones, I began to wonder whether or not this 14) ________________marketing was morally correct. I mean, is it 15) ______________________to pretend to 6) ________your friend's ___________________at heart when in fact, you are a 17) _________agent of a marketing company? The campaign definitely 18) ________________sales of the iPhone and many of the purchases were attributed to me, which meant that I got a healthy bonus, but I quit after a few months. I was afraid my friends would find out that I had 19) ________ them and would never trust me again. 20) _______________advertising does work, but only when someone is giving you his honest opinion, not when the opinion is just a “pitch.” It is true that today’s consumers are quite 21) __________; they know that advertisers are trying to sell them something, not inform them. If consumers find they cannot trust even their friends, there is bound to be a 22) _____________against viral marketing, too.

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