Bah Bah Black Sheep

I have come across some bizarre things since I began keeping a blog but I have yet to see something like this, the branding of sheep. No I am not referring to placing a piece of scalding hot metal against an animal's skin to leave a permanant burn. What I am referring to is far worse and more psycologically damaging (well maybe not, but it's pretty low and abusive if you ask me). If you were driving down a highway in the Netherlands you may come across one of these poor creatures. These walking, woolly flocks of bleating advertisements were put on display by a Dutch online reservations company, hotels.nl.
I have heard of similiar tactics used in the advertising industry, people having messages written on their foreheads or wearing shirts with company's name or logo. But these people are consenting to being used as commercial subjects and they are probably getting paid too. Although, it costs about $1.23 a day per sheep it is not really clear who gets this money. Yet, I highly doubt its the sheep wearing a change purse around their belly so they can retire comfortably. These sheep were not asked for their permission before having waterproof, insulated, branded, washed in cintronella to repel insects blanket strapped onto them.
This has promtped a reaction however not from the environmentalist, animal-rights advocates as would be expected. Instead its Bert Kuiper, the town's mayor who raised concerns that advertising on livestock violates the town's ban on advertising along highways.
They are being fined 100 eros a day but Hotels.nl is not yielding. Despite the criticisms, sales at Hotels.nl have been up 15 percent since the campaign began. They are beginning to look into locations with frequent traffic jams to place more flocks. There goal is 25,000 branded sheep within the Netherlands. They hope to expand to cows and horses in the future.

Toilets, Sex, and Women..oh my!

Guerilla's have no shame. Not only do they place their messages where no advertiser has gone before, but their messages tend to go where no one has gone before. They dabble in the profane and inappropriate hoping to spark the interest of their target audience.



This is a guerilla campaign for Bild, a popular newspaper in Germany. They decided to do a small guerilla stint at the German Arts Director's Club Awards show in Berlin in March 2006. They decorated the men's toilets with a special mirror. While relieving themselves, men would look into the mirror and read the tag line, "Nothing's harder than the truth".

Another campaign that dances on the thin line of being inappropriate was a campaign developed by Daniel Wolfe of Wolfe/Doyle Advertising in San Francisco. He wanted to reach the bar crowd, he did so with coasters reading, on one side, "Strike out tonight?" and, on the other side, "Then go home and play with yourself." I appears that bars and sexual innuendos go hand in hand. Another campaign occured in San Franscisco in 2001 during by Ammo Marketing. They hired 40 beautiful women to enter bars, pant "save me" into men's ears, drop business cards into their pockets and promptly disappear. Just as desired, most of the men called the phone number on the business cards. But instead of seductive women answering the phone, they got pitches for a new online game from Electronics Arts called Majestic. This campaign did not go over very well with the men involved. Most people do not like being tricked or teased.

Recently a lot of guerilla marketing is getting slack for being tiresome. As it makes its way into the norm of advertising, companies need to be more authentic and original. Although guerilla marketing is a form of bold, grassroots advertising, it has become quite institutionalized and a commonplace that many companies have become reluctant to use.

Can You Hear Me Now?

There is one company who I depend on with my life, yet despise as having the worst customer service that has ever existed...Verizon. The name reminds me of a piece of glass slicing into my foot as I accidentially walk upon it. I know I am being really harsh, but my past experiences with the company have been very negative for me. I guess this is truly demonstrative of what people mean by fostering good customer relations, because if you don't, blogs like this will appear and forever mare the names of companies that stink. So you are probably wondering what this has to do with Guerilla Marketing. Just now I came upon an instance where the oh-great-and monopoly holding phone company tried out some guerilla strategies only to be met with fines. However what appears to be consequential actually seems like a pretty good deal.

In 2001, the company tried to raise awareness about the yellowpages.com that consisted of stenciling orange-red chalk ads on sidewalks in Washington, D.C. Since they never sought a permit from the mayor, the company was fined $150 for is each of the seven ads city officials found. However, after further reading into the matter, it appears that 135 ads had been sprayed in total but only seven were left as the other ads had worn away or were washed off before D.C. crews could clean them.
That means the company pretty much got away scotch free, thats only $1,050, less than the price of airing a commercial on prime time or buying an ad in a newspaper. Its a phenomenal. At $150 a pop, it's pretty much a bargain, don't you think? Can you imagine what the CPM is on that?

I suppose I am a little bitter that Verizon got away with its illegal guerilla actions. However I do not think in turn I would demand tighter controls on guerilla marketing. I love seeing the new ideas companies come up with in order to break through the clutter. But perhaps stenciling on sidewalks is getting a little cliche.
I believe I already wrote a post about it earlier this year. So maybe instead of asking their age old question, "Can you hear me now" they should be asking "Can I help you now". We all know they exist and have service in every crevice of the country. Perhaps now they can work on that customer service factor.

Guerilla Elections

Guerilla marketing has raised up from the depths of obscurity as an easily overlooked marketing tool to being in the forefront of a lot of campaigns. It is very effective at creating a lasting impression in an industry where retention is highly valued. This is why when I created my own campaign, Guerilla marketing was an essential component in my marketing mix.

I am currently running a campaign for Senior Class '07 called ClassRoots. The entire process has been an execution of everything I learned while studying in the Integrated Makreting Communications major. Basically I have a message and I am trying to deliver it to as many of my classmates as possible. Putting together this campaign has been very challenging as well as enlightening. A politcal campaign is equivelant to a product in terms of selling and therefore I applied the same tactics. I drafted my message, made a logo, a tag line, poster ideas, execution, distribution, got information to the right outlets, located my influencers, and ran a full-out marketing campaign for the ClassRoots '07. In retrospect, I can not believe how much querilla marketing played into my campaign and how effective it really is.

I hung posters, made brochures, tabled for six hours a day for five days, and all those traditional campaigning strategies. Yet,I felt that there needed to be more. A way to reach the people who were not seeking this information, who had no concern about their senior class representatives. I had to think like a guerilla. The first thing we did was set up a facebook group and invited as many people as we could. Soon we had four hundred members that could be instantly messaged with then click of a botton. The creation of the facebook page created a solid base for us where we could post information and even establish a diologue with hundreds of poeple on a very personal basis. It was also important that we created a culture for our campaign, to create associations with our name: ClassRoots. We wanted to show that we are close to our classmates, not detached. We spray painted our logo on shirts (rather than printing) this was for economic and coolness factors. The shirts where then distributed to individuals we thought were influential. They wore the shirts all week long!!! People noticed the shirts and even asked for their own.

Not only did we practice guerilla marketing in our campaign, so did our rivals. Their party is called the Coup (creating understanding, oppurtunties, and parties). They developed a campaign around a fist with the initials COUP on each knuckle. All their supporters then were encouraged to do the same. They also incorporated the fist pound, doing it with every person they talked to. These methods were unconventional and got them attention.

Regardless of who wins the campaign (the vote will take place next week) I think it is interesting that guerilla tactics were intricately woven into both campaigns. Applying and seeing guerilla marketing in action was very exciting because there is an immediate response. Watching people's inquisitive faces as they see the shirt and in turn asking the person wearing it for more information was exhilerating! Guerilla marketing gets my vote.

Outsourcing to Guerillas

By outsourcing to guerillas, I am not referring to transferring business functions over to our primate cousins. I am referring to hiring an outside company to create and execute guerilla style campaigns. This rather new marketing function is not as easily accomplished as scanning radio and television ratings and viewship demographics and then placing advertisments there. Oh no, gurilla marketing involves a whole lot more. It involves street smarts, knowing what hot and whats not, understanding consumer trends, and knowing the ins and outs of the location in which campaign is to be executed. In other words, one should leave guerilla marketing to the experts.

These experts come in many forms. One of the more noterious companies is GoGuerilla. This company offers various services that focus around printing your organizations name on unexpected objects your target consumer may come into contact with while going about their day to day business. These objects are rather random such as condoms, matchbooks, waterbottles, etc. There website is very extensive and even offers media matching services allowing you to consider your exact target and effective methods to reach them. They have other services too such as postcards and poster hangings.

Many other companies exist and do not specialize to such a degree. Go Guerilla Media does a specific function and many businesses require a more personalized list of guerilla services. Outsourcing is still my recommendation. I experienced such outsourcing first hand over the summer of 2005. I interned for MKTG Partners. It is a small marketing firm that specializes in outdoor events. During my internship the shoe company, Nike, was working through us to execute their summer marketing activities. They were seeking new, innovative, unexpected, and fun ways to reach their consumers. We did just that for them. We designed different campaigns for their many many objectives. Nike is constantly in the midst of a million projects from professional sponsorships to hosting local basketball tournamants.

The projects I worked on were guerilla marketing wrapped up with some viral and interactive strategies, essentially they were unconventional as hell. My favorite was when NIKE bought out two billboards in the middle of Times Square to promote their new individually customized shoes. One of the boards had a phone number on it and the other had a shoe. The objective was to call the phone number and if you got through, you used your keypad on your cell phone to change the color of the shoe on the other billboard. Nike gave out 1 pair of shoes a minute for free throughout the five hour event. My job was to organize, dress, and prep a street team to walk up and down Broadway rallying attention to the billboards by pointing and say things like, "Check it out" "Its changing" "Free Shoes". It was so much fun. People would get so excited, standing there for hours calling and calling and then suddenly someone would start screaming, "Oh my Goodness, I got through, I'm changing the shoe!!!".
Another Guerilla marketing event my company did involved mimicking a commercial. When the the Nike Free sneaker came out, Nike had a commercial of people running down the beach in all white wearing the new shoes. Our company in turn outfitted a group of runners in the same gear and they ran all over Manhattan as in the commericial.

Companies Must not be afraid to go places no one has gone before. Its the only way to break through the clutter and get noticed. However one should consult the experts before throwing an entire marketing budget into these kinds of campaigns. There are many risks involved.