Unusual and efficient guerilla marketing moves and ideas

Things to know about guerilla marketing

The original term ‘guerilla marketing’ appeared in 1984 after Jay Conrad Levinson had introduced it his book “Guerilla Marketing.” The book became quite popular. Brands have immediately caught onto the trend because of its low cost and high efficiency. This approach allows an entrepreneur to communicate with a potential audience in a free manner, engaging even more people in this way. An overview of typical activities comprise the following marketing approach:

1. Ambient marketing looks, like the simplest form of this method; you can consider any accessible plane or surface as a potential billboard for your promotional materials.
2. Stealth or buzz marketing is preferred by large brands. It is an indirect promotion technique based on an inconspicuous offering of goods, services and brands.
3. Ambush marketing might be called an intriguing way to engage new customers that should wake up some associations, that finally would eventually get a customer to a brand.
4. Viral marketing is a way of wave-like or rapid dissemination of marketing messages using emotional reactions of the specific target group.
5. Grassroots marketing works naturally when you share information about the valuable product via social media.
6. Astroturfing is a kind of campaigning when you artificially create some profitable public opinion about your product to raise sales and promote your brand in general.
7. Street marketing is any inventive and legal kind of outdoor promotion activity.

Guerilla marketing might be used by every enterprise or brand to promote its products. Below you will find several cases of application of this approach from some brands you can understand easily and then use them for your own actual needs.

Chalk graffitis

Chalk graffitis is the quickest, simplest, and cute-looking way to appeal to your clients. Find some artistic, courageous and mind-blowing illustration about your product or brand that would help you to address your clients, make them talk about you. Let us have a look at this McDonald’s zebra. Or, if you sell something of international production, then apply something like this oblique line concept for your ads:

"Tech company Nvidia force people to think they are balancing on edge." Quite a provoking picture, isn’t it?

Jeep’s outdoor parking campaign seems to be an efficient way to attract people’s attention and spread your marketing campaign in a viral way. Look through several viral marketing ideas for advertising your product.

Simple yet #creative Jeep advertisement. pic.twitter.com/gGx8Af7kpB

— This is stunning! (@thisisstunning) June 22, 2015

Posters and stickers

If you are planning some bigger campaign, you can always use this idea. On 17 May Depositphotos held a conference Creative Loop: Kyiv-Berlin. To inform people about the future event and force them to talk about it between each other, we’ve spread hundreds of posters and stickers around Kyiv. All the flyers were added with QR-codes so that people could scan them and later find out about this curious event.

Some others we placed over accessible planes – on walls, doors, fences, all around the city.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel mural has been involved in so many compositions of the creative design, but Dr. Kim’s Plastic Surgeon looks outstanding and remarkable here.

If you are getting bored with traditional ways of advertising things, then try billboards for expressing your creative ideas concerning your product, the things you want to tell your customers about it. Here again, we see that McDonald’s is working hard to be perceived easily. You don't need any words to fully get the message.

Vending machines draw attention

Place a vending machine at some buzzing place, and even though it is expensive, it will work perfectly. Give people some basic things for free, and they will be happy; meanwhile your expenses would be covered, and you feel that you have invested in raising brand awareness, your brand image and these things will all increase make your sales.

Sprite has shown themselves to be smart in this respect. No one would refuse to take a shower under this massive soda machine.

NGOs are another group of institutions which might gain some attention and feedback from society by applying guerilla marketing methods. To draw people’s attention towards an issue about water pollution, the UNICEF has placed a machine with dirty water.

Create installations

If you’re still thinking about your opportunities, we can suggest another way of making installations. You can always create some attractive visual with the objects you sell. Look how Apple has demonstrated this seemingly smashed storefront to stimulate iPod sales.

Une idée marketing efficace pour symboliser la puissance d'un accessoire Hi-Fi ! pic.twitter.com/sB1MyaJFGU

— Creapills �� (@creapills) January 12, 2017

You can draw a logo on the back of the bench and remove its seat, as Nike’s marketing team did once. It worked because provocation is also a way to draw people's attention.

I am going to remove all the seats in my house! Creative communication! #marketing #business #entrepreneur #seo #marketingdigital #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing #digitalmarketing #branding #entrepreneurship #art #startup #advertising #contentmarketing #onlinemarketing pic.twitter.com/r2a65piMC0

— VALU Consultants (@VALUconsultants) February 19, 2019

Holiday solutions in guerilla-marketing style by McDonald’s looks strikingly attractive.

pic.twitter.com/WRmDV4jtSP

— Emerald Isle EP (@EmeraldIsleSpec) March 16, 2019

So, as you see, all these ideas are pointed at the struggle for customer attention, as it gets exhausted by traditional advertising. Feel free to make people smile, make them think differently, surprise them positively, support them with something sweet and nice in the middle of a massive urban landscape – and you will certainly get good outcomes.

Are you an enthusiast of guerilla marketing ways? Share your ideas and outcomes in the comments section below. We are always happy to know that our creative fellows are doing well wherever they are!