Thinking Outside the Television Box

The End

2006-05-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Over the course of a semester I kept a blog on the topic of Guerilla Marketing. I had a lot of fun with this assignment because it allowed me the discretion to take the blog in whatever direction I wanted to. I’ve never kept a blog before because cataloguing my personal life just never appealed to me. However I never considered the idea of becoming an expert in a particular field and commenting on the subject on a weekly basis. I was cool to imagine what people may stumble upon my blog and how they would use its content. Working in this consumer empowered blogsphere has made me appreciate the impact it is having on the industry.

In the process of becoming a credible writer on the topic of guerilla marketing I did a lot of research and case studies. I examined what other companies tried and if their initiatives were successful or failed miserably. I am glad to have this understanding because I know unconventional marketing tactics are becoming the norm in the industry and now I am ready to embrace it and can even offer insight on the matter.

In review of what I learned through this process, Guerilla marketing is an inexpensive and unconventional way to reach conventional goals. In laymen’s terms, guerilla means that it’s new, original, and found outside the realm of traditional mediums such as TV and newspapers. These tactics exude creativity and originality. It tends to appeal to a younger demographic who appreciate a marketer who can get their attention in the media saturated world they grew up in.

Sometimes guerilla campaigns can be ridiculously effective, achieving results and surpassing marketing objectives with only a small budget. However some campaigns can be offensive or even illegal and may constitute as vandalism. Throughout my blog I list examples of both.

I will use a story about Sony to emphasize how careful guerillas must be when trying to level with their audience. Sony created a graffiti campaign that rubbed their target exactly the wrong way. After paying graffiti artists to paint images of little kids playing with their products in inner city neighborhoods, they received a lot of negative feedback for debasing neighborhood walls “in order to move units”. In San Franscico, someone decided to let Sony know how they felt about the campaign by changing the word Sony to “Fony” and discoloring the images. This is not exactly the consumer-generated feedback Sony had in mind. But it demonstrated the point I am making. While Sony thought they were being cool and hip, they were in fact making a lot of people angry.

A lot of big corporations with seemingly unlimited budgets use guerilla marketing to achieve marketing objectives such as Nike and Verizon. However guerilla happens to be a favorite domain for non-profit organizations that advertise to achieve social change. World Water Day is such an example. They began the campaign by placing king sized straws on sewers across Spain with the message “Would you drink from this water? Thousands of people haven’t got another choice”. In Belgium a similar guerilla campaign went on but instead of straws in sewers it featured stickers of a little boy’s face stuck in the sinks of movie theatres, pubs, and public toilets. These are very powerful messages that would not have been heard without these unconventional methods of marketing.

Guerilla marketing is awesome because like this blog gave me the discretion to do whatever I wanted, guerilla marketing gives the company the freedom to create whatever they can possibly think of as methods to promote. From chalking sidewalks to painting foreheads. from bathrooms to blimps, there is nowhere you can hide from guerilla. It’s going to get ya!

Bah Bah Black Sheep

2006-04-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-04-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-04-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

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.

It's not over until the Guerilla Sings

2006-03-30T19:40:00.000-08:00

Professor Gregson, I am not yet satisfied with the content on my blog. I choose to work on it over the next few weeks. Thank you

This is Guerilla Marketing

2006-03-30T19:10:00.000-08:00

Most companies launch advertising campaigns and use guerilla tactics to compliment their other promotional activites. However New York Magazine took a chance, one could say that they threw all their eggs in one basket. In 2005 the magazine relaunched itself with a brand new format and to generate buzz, they created a city wide guerilla campaign. After just one month newsstand sales boosted by double digits and Web traffic shot through the roof. This was rather remarkable considering it was their first campaign in 8 years and their budget was under $1 million (a meager amount compared to the industry's average).

So how did they do it? A month-long "This is New York" guerilla, interactive campaign is the answer. They hung posters all over the city and coupled it with live promotions. The posters were placed in subways and kiosks and were changed daily to promote different events going on around the city using themes that were linked to current events.

Live promotions really gave the campaign that extra bang. Its easy to walk by a poster but its hard to walk by one when there are people standing next to it drawing your attention there. Posters sometimes features crossword puzzles were accompanied by staffers handing out pencils and paper versions of the puzzle to solve. Promotional cards were also incorporated in the marketing blitz which had numbers that if entered on their website could win that person a free month's rent. As if this wasn't enough, the magazine took it to the next level by incorporating children. To coincide with the New York's back-to-school posters, children were given chalk to write "This is New York" (the campaigns tag line) where ever they wanted.

In one month the magazine made a substantial mark on the Big Apple. Their website hits increased by 80% and newstand sales were up 14%. The momentum behind this campaign was tremendous. They related to New Yorkers in a relevant way by being in the subways, offering free rent, and involving the children. New York city is very condensed with thousands of people at your fingertips. If this market is accessed correctly the rewards are numerous, as demonstrated by New York magazine. Their "This is New York" campaign really highlights guerilla marketing and waht it is capable of achieving.

Thinking Outside of the Guerilla Box

2006-03-26T18:55:00.000-08:00

As I searched the industry newletters and blogs looking for new and exciting information about Guerilla marketing, I came to the conclusion that I have been rather closed-minded in my pursuits. I have looked to tangible examples of guerilla marketing such as unconventional outdoor, but never stopped to consider the other forms of guerilla marketing. To reiterate what we all probably know, guerilla marketing is using unconventional methods to reach a conventional end...getting client message's to the consumers. Therefore lets consider viral marketing. When word-of-mouth marketing occurs outside of advertisers hands it is consumer generated and no longer catagorized as intentional marketing. However there is another type of viral marketging, and in my opinion it fits snuggly into the guerilla marketing catagory. Viral marketing that is intentionally conducted and paid for by clients is unconvential, minimally expensive, and another way to achieve the ends that I mentioned above.

Besides keeping my blog and being a full-time student, I have a third occupation. I am a buzzagent. Buzzagent is found online and operates as a viral marketing agency. Companies pay buzzagent to spread the word about new products via viral marketing. Buzzagent in turn, has an arsenal of buzzagents who sign up for these campaigns. Once I sign onto a campaign I get a package in the mail that includes free samples and information about the product. I am then given the responsibility of "buzzing" people I interact with on a daily basis. This means that whenever possible I talk about this new product and its many attributes and give these person a sample and ask for some feedback. I am then required to fill out a buzzreport for buzzagent letting them know how people respond. I recieve buzzpoints as a reward for these reports, and with these points I can get cool prices.

Currently I am signed onto a buzzcampaign for Hershey's new candybar, Take5. I find myself in a slightly torn position because I love the candy bar so much and I love talking about how good it is...it had peanut, chocolate covered pretzel, and caramel!! However I am very reluctant to share the candy bars with anyone. This also is demonstrative on how unreliable this service can potentionally be. Some people could act very unethically and make up the buzzreports in order to get the free samples to themselves. In the future I will try not to sign onto campaigns that involve food. Lesson learned.
For more information about this agency visit www.buzzagent.com

Guerilla Style

2006-03-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

Guerilla strategies are a phenomena found in many other arenas outside of marketing. The term can be applied to strategies employed to undercut stronger opponents who already control the market. Today I came across the term while reading a case study about Southwest Airlines. Southwest Airlines is credited as being the only high-frequency, short distance, low air-fare industry. They participated in something called guerilla warefare when it came to competing against USAirways, Continential, Delta and other industry leaders. Rather than competing directly against these airlines, they concentrated their efforts on short trips and certain cities where they could make about ten flights a day. There unconventional approach (no frills, short, cheap flights) was unlike anything else in the market and therefore generated a lot of attention, something trillions of dollars of advertising could not accomplish.
There style can be considered guerilla. They go where no company goes. Rather than focusing on ameneties and luxury, they focus on good humour. Their employees have extremely high satifaction rates which translates directly into increased productivity. They often do unconvential things such as paint pictures onto their planes. These stunts are guerilla....cheap yet remarkable. I think the industry may refer to this occurance as a Purple Cow!

Not-so-Free People Guerilla Marketing

2006-03-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

Although free consumer generated buzz is a priceless commodity, it is not always easy to come by. For this reason, many companies have paid individuals to act as walking advertisments and this kind of people labor does not come cheep. Teri Iligan got more than the minimum wage when in 2002 she changed her name FOREVER to Golden Palace.com. In order to raise her five children better, Golden Palance.com auctioned off her name to the highest bidder on E-bay. Within 24 hours GoldenPalance.com offered Terri $15,199 to add her name to their list of assets.
Another example of buying people to adveritise are human billboards. This phenomanom is not as pernamant as legally changing ones name and tends to get a lot of attention. There are different techiniques such as ForeheAds and body painting. It is currently a huge trend in London however the idea is not original. I remember seeing people dressed up like sodas and hotdogs outside of restaurants many years ago....I bet they never considered themselves to be on the cutting edge of the advertisment industry!!!!

Free People Guerilla Marketing

2006-03-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Guerilla Marketing was once thought to be an industry mechanism but it is now moving more into the individual involvement sphere. The basis of guerilla marketing is catching the attention of an individual and creating an experiential interaction, leaving an impression on the individual. The field has now expanded to encompass even more involvement by these individuals, even though they operate externally from the company trying to advertise.
An example is SeeThruthesmoke.com. This website gives people the oppurtunity to promote the dangers of smoking. It empowers people who support the cause to actually join the effort to spread the message. This consumer-generated guerilla marketing tactic provides a very economically-friendly and credible outlet, the people from the streets. There are tips, strategies, information, and a variety of ideas for spreading the word around your local community. This form of guerilla marketing makes use of the best communications media....word of mouth.

Ebay thinks outside the Box too

2006-03-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

Even Ebay uses guerilla marketing tactics to generate buzz and awareness.

Guerilla Marketing and Legal Issues

2006-03-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

A lot of unconventional marketing methods happen to also fall into the illegal catagory. In 2001 IBM was fined $100,000 by San Fransisco's city authorities for vanalizing roads and pavements. This was the result of a guerilla marketing campaign promoting Linux called "Peace, Love and Linux". The campaign consisted of spraypainting logos around the city.
IBM has claimed that they used biodegradable chalk. However clean-up time did not go as easily as planned. Baking soda and high powered hoses were required to remove the markings and still some of the markings remain. There have been rumors that the company knew the marks would be permanent since some were even etched into the ground. This behavior is very unethical especially since the company says they had no intention of creating unremoveable marks. Action like this gives guerilla marketing negative publicity. For every create idea this field generates, there seems to be an equally indecent idea.

Guerilla Marketing is more popular than Harry Potter

2006-03-12T19:29:00.000-08:00

On February 23, 2006 Guerilla Marketing achieved some real credibility as the book titled "Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days" by Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing, and Al Lautenslager, a marketing/PR consultant, speaker, and certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach, reached the number one spot on Amazon's best sellers in Japan on February 15, 2006, beating bestseller Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
This is a huge score for guerilla marketing tactics. It shows that they are becoming a acceptable way to market a product. Even though there is still no way to measure how effective guerilla marketing is, its attention-getting qualities are cutting through the clutter....and the other paper backs.

Nike: Just Ambush it

2006-03-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

Nike is the most notorious of the Ambush Marketers and they happen to operate in a very high end area where the stakes are the greatest.....Sports sponsorships. Sports have a lot of revenue from the marketing industry because they capture a very big audience whom also happen to be very loyal to their teams. The Olympics and the FIFA World Cup are considered to be the undisputed most watched events. The 1998 World Cup final in France was watched by 1.7 billion; the 2002 World Cup in drew a cumulative audience of almost 5 billion. Millions and millions of dollars are poured into sponsorships and advertisement time. As a result ambush marketing has developed into quite an art. One creates an opportnity to leave an impression on a huge audience and to do so without paying a cent is very tempting. Although such tactics are criticized as being tacky and unethical, they have been the most creativity and innovation in the industry lately.
Nike has pulled some tricks on their biggest competitors such as Adidas. In 2002 Adidas Sponsored runners in the Boston Marathon. Adidas provided their shirts which of course sported the adidas logo and tag. Nike, in turn, treated the runners to a spray painted swoosh. In 1992 at the Bacelona Olympics, Reebok paid a ton to be the game's official sponsor only to be undermined by Nike as they sponored the press conference with the US basketball team. Nike was also behind what is considered to be the greatest ambush marketing feat of all times. During the same Barcelona Olympics, Michael Jordan, covered up his Reebok Logo when he accepted the gold medal for basketball. Nike strategically avoids sponsoring events because it recieves all the exposure it needs by sponsorings individuals and teams. Even though the 2002 World Cup was sponsored by Adidas, many of the top teams such as Brazil are outfitted entirely in Nike Gear. Nike also sponsored the US hockey team at the 2002 Winter Olympics and got plenty of exposure despite not paying the Olympic Organizing Committee a penny. Legality has not been a big issue in ambush marketing yet. However these tactics are dimishing the credibility of these events because it is difficult to convince companies to invest $50 million to become an official sponsor when they risk getting outted by their biggest competitor for free. Not to mention that these events rely on revenue from corporate sponsors for their survival!
The industry will need to make some adjustments in order to take into account this fom of marketing at it increases in popularily or else the perfect balance risks getting tipped.

Ambush Marketing

2006-03-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

Ambush Marketing is an area of Guerilla marketing that has a unique application. Like typical guerilla marketing, it tries to reach the audience through an unconventional means and usually for a smaller cost. However it is more specific because it occurs when one brand pays to be the official sponsor of an event and another competing brand attempts to cleverly connect itself with the event, without paying the sponsorship fee and not breaking any laws. Although technically legal, this form of marketing has many ethical implications. Some companies will pay $20 billion to be an official sponsor just to have a competitor undermine them and the integrity of an event. There are also concerns about how ambush marketing will effect the ability for events to attract future sponsors.

Survival of the Innovative

2006-02-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

Between Television, Radio, Internet, magazines, mail...advertisements are unavaiodable. Many, like myself, have been dumbed and numbed to the marketing tactics of differnt organizations in these traditional mediums. The market place has become nothing but undifferentiated clutter and the survival of any organization depends on the single most important factor- innovation. It is of utmost importance, especially to small and medium scale enterprises, as they need to survive along with large organizations, which have huge sums of money and influences. So, for small and medium scale enterprises who just can't afford to take out an ad during the superbowl, you should pay close attention to all the places that these big comapanies ARE NOT advertising. This strategy has given way to Guerrilla Marketing and involves the investment of energy and creativity rather than money.

I personally think this tactic is more effective. I always take note when a message has the ability to break into my precious, protected, selective attention. Ad avoidance is my gerneral policy, consequently when an ad effectively breaks into my screen, I have to give credit where credit is due; the advertisment worked and the message was dually noted! I am more likely to take action for the organization if I think they are original and cool. Many others from my generation have similiar feelings towards marketing since we have been exposed and saturated in it from the moment our eyes could register objects. Our generation therefore is more critical and conscious than any market that has ever been advertised to in the past. This is perhaps why Guerilla tactics are extremely effective for Generation X and Y. We are very adept at tuning out traditional marketing tactics. When a company puts there message in a new place using objects that are relevant to our culture they make a sound and we hear it. Companies that can adapt to these new circumstances will survive. Those who think they can reach us through old methods of advertising will likely fall into the abyss of clutter and unheard messages. Sorry

2006-02-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

Guerilla Marketing in its finest hours

Smirnoff: underage drinking isn't their only legal concern

2006-02-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Guerilla marketing is a technique employed in non-traditional mediums in order to get the consumer to hear or see a message when they least expect to. The suprise factor is the point and companies go to many extremes to achieve this. When marketing to young people it is important to have the appearance of being original and unique. In search of the perfect attention-getting marketing device, Smirnoff overlooked some important details.
In 2003 the vodka producer, Smirnoff, wanted to try something new to promote their Smirnoff ice drink to 18-25 year olds in Leeds, United Kingdom. They stenciled and steam jetted their trendy slogans and catch phrases in a busy underpass. But they failed to get permission from the government and were soon accused of vandalism. The government imposed a cleaning fine on them which cost them several thousand pounds. Smirnoff apologized for not following governmental procedures before marking up public property. Luckily they were allowed to keep up the art work until the completion of the campaign and accepted to clean the underpass once it was finished, so much for using a cheap media vehicle.
Smirnoff was successful in getting plenty of exposure. It is said that guerilla marketing in more popular with younger people and younger people is who Smirnoff was targeting in their marketing efforts. Although getting consumer attention is the main objective, it would help to not get negative publicity and government fines in the process!

Got Guerilla Marketing?

2006-02-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

In Australia, Marketforce created an ironic campaign to inform people about the health benefits of drinking milk. Under the guise of a missing milk carton person, they place a photograph of an unpleasantly overweight person implying that what is missing is the fat from milk, or your fat if you drink milk. I think it is clever, however I think I might loose weight from loosing my appitite from looking at my milk carton.

Thought By Me

2006-02-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Guerilla Marketing is creative and creativity is the essence of effective advertising.

A new Edge on Advertising Clothing

2006-02-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

A clothing chain in Belgium called C&A ran a guerilla campaign to raise money to support UNICEF. The initiative was to collect money for the young victems of the earthquake in Pakistan. In order to make a meaningful impression on customers, clothing was fashioned out of Pakistani newspapers and hung around the store next to the real clothes, featuring the message: "Is this the only thing homeless children will wear this winter? Help them with a gift at the pay desk".

2006-02-10T06:38:00.000-08:00

"Jay is one of the foremost business marketing experts in the world. No one knows how to use the weapons of the trade better than industry expert Jay Levinson" --Entrepreneur Magazine

2006-02-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

Guerilla Marketing is the future of the industry since the effectiveness of the 30 second TV spot is fading and the market is becoming increasingly deaf to the cries of desperate advertising. The Guerilla approach hits the target when they least expect it, in the bathroom or on a napkin. This new appoach has blurred the traditional media barriers. The conventional way of marketing was to expose the consumer to a product when they were engaged in a type of media, but now, we can find the consumer while he is doing anything, even number 2.