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GUERRILLA MARKETING: when communication involves the first person

During these years as an agency, we have met and got to know different realities that have allowed us to acquire a certain amount of experience in the field of marketing: this has turned into a structured and well-defined method of work, a sequence of well-oiled steps between them that guarantees that we achieve the objectives set with the realities we follow.

Creativity is an indispensable component for these systems to work: finding new ways to express it in our field results in an exploration of different ways of doing marketing that are
unconventional
, as is, for example, guerrilla marketing. What is it all about? We discuss this in this article.

 

WHAT IS GUERRILLA MARKETING?

Let’s start by defining what guerrilla marketing is: it is a type of marketing that using unconventional methods and low-cost tools achieves traditional goals. (Source:
InsideMarketing
)

The different types

As we anticipated earlier, there are several methods by which this type of marketing is declined.

There is the buzz marketing, where the ultimate goal is to create conversation (and interest) around the product; there is theambient marketing, which places advertisements in unusual and unpredictable places so as to be able to catch even the most distracted eye; and then there is marketing that uses the treasure hunts. Let’s look at them in detail.

 

1. Buzz marketing

The first example, perhaps the most interesting of the ones we will see because of the kind of impact it had in public involvement and success, was the campaign to promote the film released in 1999
Blair Witch Project
.

At a time when the Internet was just beginning to take hold but was not yet as widespread as it is today, using it to create hype around a (fictional) case of lost people, effectively taking the plot of the film and transporting it into reality, was the winning move.

The film, written and directed by two first-time directors, did not initially have a favorable basis to break the box office: no names involved in the production were known to the public, the genre to which the film belongs was niche, and the chances of it going unnoticed were high.

The authors then used the film’s official website to disseminate, a year before the film’s release, the poster of three missing young boys complete with fake biographies, interviews with parents and useful information to make the case as truthful as possible, and a sentence written within the website:

 




In October 1994 three student videographers disappeared in a forest near Burkittsville, Maryland, while they were filming a documentary… A year later their footage was found.”

.

 

Interest grew like wildfire, fueled by the doubt that the event reported on the site could be true or false, so much so that people went to the theater to see the “found” footage for themselves.

The result was a box office success far greater than the budget initially invested, so much so that this film will remain in film (and marketing) history.

 

Poster spread online

 

2. Treasure hunts

Another interesting declination of guerrilla marketing is to create some
treasure hunts
, a mode that truly makes the target audience the protagonist.

In October 2014, the
Books on the Underground
, an association that promotes bookcrossing, has seeded thirteen London Underground stations with three hundred limited edition copies of the Hunger Games trilogy. The stations chosen reflected the characteristics of Panem’s districts: what in the book was the first district, the scene of luxury goods production, in the London city had become Knightsbridge, the Harrods subway stop.

 

Cover of the first volume

 

In this way, readers, in order to find copies, would have to understand and associate the different fictional places with places they lived every day.

An involvement not only physical but also emotional, definitely a winning key to stay in people’s hearts and push them to get the product so advertised.

 

3. Ambient marketing

What if you were walking down the street and looked at the sidewalk and saw a brand label?

This is the case of
ambient marketing
implemented by McDonald’s in Switzerland, which replaced the crosswalks with the design of potato chips placed in the iconic packaging. Therefore, coloring an environment traversed by a multitude of people on a daily basis that can attract even the most distracted gaze is the perfect solution for achieving impactful communication at low cost.

 

Overhead photo of the transformed crosswalk

 

 

4. Unconventional marketing

The last example of unconventional marketing that can make people experience and interact with a product to be advertised firsthand that we explore today is the one done at the release of Stranger Things.

With the release of the third season, Burger King has adapted its Whopper to the Underworld, the iconic place of the series, by composing the ingredients upside down. In this way, people who find themselves eating at Burger King are transported into the atmosphere of the series and, more importantly, learn that the series is out and just waiting to be seen.

 

Poster used in the campaign

 

Why choose Guerrilla Marketing?

All these examples seen so far demonstrate how guerrilla marketing is adaptable to different niches and products, with relatively low budget demands. In fact, the biggest investment here is definitely the creativity required to develop original ideas that will strike the target audience and remain imprinted in their minds.

If you want to learn more, we leave the sources here: