Sergey Karshkov is the co-founder of 9 Pandas, a market-leading advertising agency that has worked on numerous high-profile campaigns. This article will take a closer look at guerrilla marketing and its potential to help drive publicity and brand awareness by embracing unconventional advertising methods designed to evoke surprise, wonder and even shock.
The term ‘guerrilla marketing’ was coined by the late business writer Jay Conran Levinson in the early 1980s. Levinson wrote several books about the topic, applying guerrilla tactics in a number of professional areas.
In those days, marketing was a very different industry. While guerrilla marketing is still used in modern marketing, technological advancements and increased digitisation have changed what it looks like today.
Guerrilla marketing takes its name from the term ‘guerrilla warfare’, a military strategy that involves ambushes, raids and sabotage, largely relying on the element of surprise. Guerrilla marketing techniques also rely heavily on catching people unawares as they go about their usual day-to-day routines.
One of the main benefits of guerrilla marketing is that it is relatively low-cost in nature. Although implementation need not be expensive, the real investment is in the campaign’s creation.
Marketing expert Michael Brenner points out that guerrilla marketing may involve repurposing existing content. For example, the marketer may take certain segments of a report, creating a new blog post for each and expanding upon each topic. Guerrilla marketing is budget-friendly, as while it calls for an investment of time it does not require an investment of money, per se.
Essentially, guerrilla marketing involves repurposing the audience’s current environment, evaluating it and identifying segments ripe for being repurposed to include the marketer’s brand.
Several different types of guerrilla marketing exist today, including:
- Experiential guerrilla marketing, encouraging the general public to interact with a brand
- Event ambush guerrilla marketing, which involves leveraging the audience of a live event – such as a sporting event or concert – to promote a product in an attention-grabbing way, often without permission from the sponsors of the event
- Ambient marketing, with ads blending into a natural environment
- Buzz marketing, which is typically deployed via social media, relying on users sharing content within their social networks to organically raise awareness of a product or brand
- Grassroots marketing, employing simplistic, low-cost marketing strategies
- Projection marketing, for example, large, captivating ads placed on the sides of buildings
- Indoor guerrilla marketing, e.g. marketing events staged at indoor locations like shops, university campus buildings and railway stations
- Outdoor guerrilla marketing, adding to pre-existing environments such as temporary artwork on pavements and streets
- Stealth marketing, which is used to promote products to potential customers without them even realising it
For small businesses and new start-ups, guerrilla marketing can be an effective means of creating a viral marketing phenomenon. The technique can be centred around a brand’s core mission, such as technology, climate, growth, giving or education, enabling the company to implement initiatives that give back to local people – supporting, inspiring and raising awareness in local communities.
Marketers often employ guerrilla techniques because it is typically a low-cost way of expanding audience reach and brand exposure. Rather than deploying vast amounts of capital, marketers instead rely on their creative capacity. With marketing professionals striving to create more engaging, attention-grabbing ads, this can have a significant impact in terms of broadening a brand’s reach. Not only do guerrilla marketing campaigns pose potential to produce an improved ROI compared with other modes of marketing, but many marketers find this channel more desirable and fun to deploy.
Although guerrilla marketing has numerous benefits, it also has its drawbacks and limitations. Guerrilla marketing campaigns tend to be less structured, incurring a greater risk of failure. Where there is less structure, there is the danger that consumers may not receive consistent messaging or may misinterpret the marketer’s message.
Some people question the legitimacy of guerrilla marketing. Some people object to being subjected to it. This leaves companies at risk of alienating consumers through the implementation of guerrilla marketing techniques.
Arguably the biggest downside of guerrilla marketing lies in the fact that it is incredibly unpredictable. With less structure, marketing professionals may struggle to collect sufficient metrics to determine whether or not a campaign is successful.
Guerrilla marketing is not solely the remit of small businesses. Indeed, several multinational organisations have implemented high-profile guerrilla marketing campaigns, some of which proved to be a tremendous success. Take for example Coca-Cola, which set up its ‘Happiness Machines’ in Queens, New York, providing unsuspecting students with doses of ‘happiness’ from the vending machines in the form of free Coca-Cola, flowers, pizzas and even a six-foot-long sandwich. The campaign went on to win several awards.
Guerrilla marketing is legal, although some techniques may be ethically questionable. Rather than relying on conventional approaches, some companies opt to embrace a more simplistic approach, implementing innovative strategies to lure more customers.
For news and updates from Sergey Karshkov, visit his website: https://sergeykarshkov.com
