What is guerrilla marketing?
Definition Of Guerrilla Marketing
When it comes to product promotion for brand recognition, guerrilla marketing is a strategy that relies on unconventional and surprising approaches to create campaigns that are both memorable and impactful. Cutting through the clutter of marketing messages in a world full of them may be challenging for any company. Guerrilla marketing is one way for a corporation to challenge the status quo by doing things differently from usual.
In addition, guerilla marketing efforts are often less expensive than traditional marketing campaigns, albeit they require a more grassroots approach than traditional marketing campaigns. While guerrilla marketing can be highly profitable, there is a risk involved. That risk is that the general public or local authorities will not receive it well. In one case, Smirnoff was fined thousands of dollars after the UK government deemed its pop-up, spray-painted marketing message to be “vandalism.” Getting your campaign’s launch plan precisely right before releasing it is essential.
History Of Guerrilla Marketing
The phrase “guerrilla marketing” was coined by author Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984, but you can trace its roots back to military history. “Guerrilla warfare” refers to the tactics adopted by smaller, less well-funded armed units, such as those in Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s, who were forced to be crafty due to a lack of resources.
These troops needed to be imaginative and think outside the box to have the most significant impact, so marketers compared them to business plans with a restricted marketing budget.
Types Of Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing can itself be broadly classified into the various types:
● Ambient Marketing: It refers to the marketing of goods and services via natural elements, creative design concepts, and unconventional places. As a result, they make good use of the surroundings.
● Undercover Marketing: Undercover marketing refers to discreet and ‘hidden marketing,’ such that it does not appear to consumers to be a marketing tactic. The concept is to sell things in a non-intrusive manner, as in the term “flying beneath the radar.”
● Viral Marketing: Viral or buzz marketing tactics maximize a product’s or campaign’s word-of-mouth marketing potential. It means to promote so that it captures people’s attention and causes them to talk about it. This increases the target audience’s receptivity and aids in the spread of the word about the product.
● Ambush Marketing: Ambush refers to a covert attack carried out by someone blending in plain sight. Ambush marketing is when a marketer utilizes the word ‘ambush’ to gain an advantage over its competitors by snatching the spotlight from them. It is one of the most critical tactics in brand wars since it allows a company to obtain greater exposure and capitalize on an audience at the expense of competitors.
Examples Of Successful Guerrilla Marketing
Here are a few examples of excellent guerilla marketing in action that are simultaneously creative, boundary-pushing, and unexpected –
● When Vodafone first opened shop in Romania, they hired a team of skilled pickpockets to “reverse-pickpocket” fliers into passers-pockets by raising awareness of the problem.
● Life was the one who came up with the idea of a vending machine that could distribute $50 bills for only $3. When Life used a hashtag and QR code to advertise the act, it quickly gained traction.
● Wendy’s, a well-known American fast-food restaurant, is renowned for its hilarious use of social media. In 2017, we loved the brand’s engagement in a Twitter-based rap battle with another restaurant, Wingstop. As a result, neither company went viral, nor did any company spend any money on promotion!
● Guerrilla marketing was used to promote the film Hereditary in 2018, another compelling strategy example. They placed strange dolls outside the hotel rooms of people who attended a midnight film viewing by the production company, which blended the film’s ominous aesthetic with the dolls’ disagreeable aesthetic.
