6 . You are in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at the sweater. You listen to the conversation.

"I can't believe it—a Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn't it beautiful? And it's a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome."

They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It's nice and the price is right. You've never heard of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. They must know. So you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes.

Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too. This is the secret of undercover（暗中影响的）marketing.

Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that 'don't pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation consumers between the age of 18 and 34. It is a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don't trust ads.

So advertising agencies hire young actors "perform" in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice deceptive, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative. "Look at the traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing." However, one might ask what "real" is exactly about if young women pretend to be enthusiastic about a sweater? Advertising executives would say it's no less real than an ad. The difference is that you know an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. While you don't know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance.

10 . Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertisers, hoping to sell their products .

'The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people's lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.