Guerrilla Marketing in the Tech Age
Guerrilla marketing is a familiar concept in modern day marketing, as a low-budget strategy that generates massive buzz through word of mouth, while reinforcing the brand.
Amidst Tv commercials, radio pitchmen, magazine spreads, Internet banner ads, sponsorships et cetera, guerrilla marketing serves as an effective strategy for your brand to cut through the plethora of advertising messages that your audience is bombarded with daily.
As new technologies emerge, marketers look forward to discovering ways to take advantage of these technological developments, in promoting the efficiency of marketing efforts.
Definition and Characteristics of Guerrilla Marketing
Guerilla marketing is a part of buzz marketing that is unconventional and aims to give the shock effect, drive publicity and as a result, brand awareness.
Compared with other forms of marketing, guerrilla campaigns often cost a lot less, and they make huge impacts when executed correctly.
Characteristics of Guerrilla Marketing include:
Creativity and Surprise: A clever ad that exudes creative genius and inspires humor, or shock has the ability to be shared tens of thousands of times, hereby maximizing impact. The element of surprise helps create a lasting experience and longer retention in the audience’s minds.
Budget friendly: Guerrilla stunts are more often than not, inexpensive — making it one of the most cost effective forms of advertising in terms of reach. The real investment here is creative and intellectual.
Conspicuous: They are typically visible enough to be observed / experienced by a large audience, simultaneously — thereby enforcing the wow effect.
Buzz: It’s important that the creativity and experience delivered is effective enough to generate spread by word of mouth. It’s not guerrilla if it doesn’t go viral — to a considerable extent.
Location: Something all guerrilla marketing campaigns have in common is a targeted launch location. Be it branded street art, or a pop-up launch party in a crowded area, location and timing are key.
Types of Guerrilla Marketing With Examples of Each
As niche as it might seem, there are actually sub-categories of guerrilla marketing. Let’s examine a few.
Outdoor: This is done out in the open and it involves interactions with preexisting urban structures / environments; like putting something removable on a statue, or applying temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets.
An example is Dominos’ paving for pizza campaign which was a clever response to customer complaints about cheese getting stuck to the top of the boxes and ingredients sliding around during delivery.
Indoor: This is similar to outdoor but it takes place indoors in locations like train stations, university campus buildings and shops.
An example is Frontline’s Interactive Floor Ad. Frontline, makers of flea and tick prevention products for dogs, filled the entire floor of a large public space with an image using people as elements in the ad. This is what I mean when I say creative genius 💡
Event Ambush: This involves taking advantage of an in-progress event — like a concert or a sporting game — to promote a brand or product to a large audience in a noticeable way, usually without permission from the event sponsors.
Fiji water executed this at the 2019 Golden Globes where models wore blue and carried trays of water for thirsty attendees. A particular model positioned herself in the background during photoshoots, photo-bombing high-profile celebrities.
She became one of the highlights of the evening, drawing attention to the brand.
Experiential: This type of Guerrilla marketing requires the public to interact with and/or experience the brand physically. Any of the sub-categories above can be experiential if executed in a way that requires a form of interaction between the audience and the ad.
Technological Disruptions In Guerrilla Marketing
A few brands have started to raise the bar in Guerrilla marketing with the use of technology.
Genesis, a luxury car brand beat the previous world record (of 3,051) with the biggest drone display ever in a drone show in Shanghai intl cruise terminal, using 3,281 drones unmanned.
Another one worth mentioning was executed during a light show by BiliBili, in celebration of the first anniversary of their game ‘princess connect’ in Shanghai.
BiliBili used 1,500 drones to form a giant QR code in the sky, which when scanned, redirects to a web page to trigger downloads.
In the area of technological applications to Guerrilla marketing, drone shows appear to be the next big thing — with the successors striving to put more drones in the sky than the predecessors.
However, in the near future, we can expect to see responsive / interactive Guerrilla marketing using technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.
Brands like TOMS and Gucci already take advantage of VR & AR in delivering beautiful in-store and mobile experiences to their customers.
3 Tips for Success in Executing Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns
Focus on the Audience
Remember it’s all about the audience. Guerrilla tactics fail when brands put their own interests above their audience’s. Conduct audience research to understand — where they hang out (online and offline), how they communicate, what’s important to them et cetera. It’s almost the same as stalking your potential next boss on LinkedIn before a big interview.
Have a Call-To-Action
Remember the giant QR in the sky? That’s a good example of an effective CTA. If you want results, consider CTAs like social media shares, QR web links and coupons. You might also create a form accessible via a link for audiences to fill in their contact information for follow-up. Having a CTA enables you to track campaign success, and return on investment (in cases where leads are generated through contact forms)
Plan for Media Amplification
The key to a successful guerrilla marketing campaign is ‘shareablity‘ coupled with a strategic communications plan for amplification. Consider creating and promoting a post-event montage with select participants, from a pool of users who have shared their experiences on social media, using the campaign hashtag and tagging the brand. The goal is to generate enough buzz to earn you media from the press.
Yes, no doubt. Technological advancements in marketing is exciting, but —
One thing to look forward to is the execution of guerilla marketing in the metaverse.
As we draw nearer to a mass adoption of the metaverse, I will publish an article that hones in on the possibilities of Guerrilla Marketing in the new virtual world.
Be sure to subscribe, to know when it’s published.
All the best,
Folahanmi Esan.
