The Beauty of Guerilla Marketing

On a day-to-day basis, consumers see literally thousands of advertisements. Hidden in logos and stitched into our clothing, advertisements invade every aspect of our lives, ingraining their messages into our psyche. In many ways, marketing has become a way of defining oneself and the world around us; ad agencies are always trying to brand products as “cool” or “fresh.” However, with so many ads floating around in the public market place, consumers have begun to tune out. Facing an increasingly apathetic audience, advertisers are desperately searching for new ideas to garner some attention. One of the many tools that marketers are using is guerilla advertising.

Marketingterms.com provides this information on “guerilla marketing:”

Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.

Guerilla advertising uses the natural environment to cleverly advertise specific products. In the photos above, three prime examples of guerilla advertising show how this type of advertising requires ingenuity and resourcefulness. These ads might not have a direct selling point, but these shows of creativity draw much attention from bystanders. People take notice of these intelligent and witty advertisements. In fact, these advertisements have become so successful that more and more companies are looking to expand their advertising campaigns into a form of guerilla advertising. On the streets of New York, I’ve often witnessed ad agencies sticker bombing locations by planting stylized and artistic stickers promoting a product or brand all over a block.

The trouble with guerilla advertising is that it quickly can become risky and sometimes illegal. On January 31, 2007, Boston police officials were informed of a potential bomb threat in the area. However, when police went to disarm the so-called bombs, they realized it was a guerilla advertisement gone wrong for Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Often disguised, guerilla advertisements have tremendous opportunity to be misinterpreted. In this particular case, the ads brought Adult Swim attention, just not the attention it had hoped to receive.

The world of advertising is not going to become any easier in the near future. Many new products flood the market on a weekly basis; advertising in any media simply can’t keep up. So, as advertisers attempt to differentiate themselves from the pack, we’ll probably start seeing large amounts of guerilla advertising in the places we’d least expect to see them.

For some terrific examples of guerilla advertising, check out:

http://www.funnymos.com/guerrilla-advertising.html

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/ADS-ARE-GOING-GUERILLA/

http://www.slideshare.net/manjgura/guerilla-marketing-in-action?src=related_normal&rel=494153