New-old
Via the labyrinthman blog...

The '60 Minutes' news program had a piece of the "revolutionary" "undercover marketing" -- marketing by masquerade, or stealth marketing: Undercover Marketing Uncovered. Example: "Freedom Tobacco wanted to market Legal, their new brand of cigarettes, they didn't have a big budget, so they did what a lot of companies are doing lately: they went undercover.?The goal here is to be sitting at the bar, you have your package of cigarettes on the table, they're open, they look full, and you're really waiting for someone to come up to you and bum a cigarette,? says the marketer.

PRIOR ART!
This "undercover marketing" technique has been around so long that there's a Japanese word for it, SAKURA meaning a 'shill' who promotes an event, play or product. In Japan, anytime crowd forms on the street Japanese will clamor to join. SAKURA people are hired to form fake crowds or lines to draw the SAKANA --literally the fish--the 'marks' into the promotion. Of course "shill" and "mark" are old carnival terms.