Guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service.

Because the key goal is to manipulate consumers into talking about the product or brand via social media platforms, significant imagination and energy is required in order to capture the attention of sufficient numbers of people.

This is especially the case when one considers that, with other firms competing for people's attention, there can be significant "clutter" in the environment that the consumer is forced to deal with daily.

[15] Buzz marketing works best when consumer's responses to a product or service and subsequent endorsements are genuine, without the company paying them.

[21] Astroturfing involves generating an artificial hype around a particular product or company through a review or discussion on online blogs or forums by an individual who is paid to convey a positive view yet who does not reveal their true motivation.

The brand ambassadors may be accompanied by a kiosk containing product samples or demonstration materials, or wearing a "walking billboard".

[25] According to Marcel Saucet and Bernard Cova,[13] street marketing can be used as a general term encompassing six principal types of activities: First, corporations identify the public places where the campaign can be developed such as beaches, cultural events, close to schools, sporting events and recreation areas for children.

[27] Companies develop plans taking into account that the global communication and interaction involved in guerrilla or street marketing is not limited to customers or the media.

Finally, there is a strategy called "team selling" that consists of forming groups of people, the majority of them young, who go knocking on doors of different houses in a neighborhood.

Then, according to the product or service that enterprises provide, and also the kind of customer, businesses decides the way they are going to manage their street marketing campaigns.

When a company decides to do a guerrilla marketing campaign which could be anything out of viral, ambient, ambush, street or stealth, the focus for them is to meet the objectives.

Guerrilla marketers need to be creative in devising unconventional methods of promotion to maintain the public's interest in a product or service.

In The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, the authors write: "...in order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer.

It must build trust and support the customer's needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits..."[31] The web is rife with examples of guerrilla marketing, to the extent that many people don't notice its presence - until a particularly successful campaign arises.

Simple examples consist of using 'loading' pages or image alt texts to display an entertaining or informative message to users waiting to access the content they were trying to get to.

Other companies run competitions or discounts based on encouraging users to share or create content related to their product.

[32] Most of the examples of the strategies that both small and big enterprises have put into action include costumed persons, the distribution of tickets, and people providing samples, among others.

One example of this took place in Montpelier, Vermont, where the New England Culinary Institute (NECI) sent a group of students to a movie theatre to hand out 400 fliers.

Another company, Boston's Kung-Fu Tai Chi Club, chose the option of disseminating fliers instead of placing its advertisements in newspapers.

In the campaign, a group of real-size ostrich puppets tried to interact with young people in order to let them know these mobiles provide a high-quality MP3 playback.

Another instance is the Spanish company Clickair (an extension of Iberia Airlines), that developed a campaign in which a group of five people had to walk through Barcelona streets dressed as Euros.

Sony Ericsson used an undercover campaign in 2002, spearheaded by Jonathan Maron,[34] when they hired 60 actors in ten major cities and had them accost strangers and ask them: "Would you mind taking my picture?"

In January 2010, Coca-Cola, with the help of Definition 6, filmed a reaction video of a Coke vending machine dispensing ‘doses’ of happiness to unsuspecting students in St. John's University.

“Coke’s goal to inspire consumers through small, surprise moments of happiness” said Paul Iannacchino Jr., Creative Director, Definition 6.

Several subway stations, bridges, and a portion of Interstate 93 were closed as police examined, removed, and (in some cases) destroyed the devices.

Such was the case in Houston, Texas, when BMW Auto's ad agency, Street Factory Media, attached a replica of a Mini-Cooper (made of Styrofoam), to the side of a downtown building in January 2013.

The company attempted to promote Zipatoni through a stealth marketing campaign, which was quickly detected by the internet community, resulting in Sony immediately experiencing a backlash from video game enthusiasts.

Thus marketing in the street, given that it is inspired by the work of such artists, brings with it constraints and statutory risks for which agencies and advertisers are generally not prepared.

Numerous potential operations have failed to obtain authorization for safety reasons, and in certain urban areas it is even expressly forbidden to undertake a guerrilla marketing campaign.

By setting up an internet campaign devoted to spreading rumors about the fictitious 'Blair Witch', it created a lot of interest for the film.