What is guerrilla marketing

It was the American advertiser Jay Conrad Levinson who coined this definition in 1984 and specified its characteristics in his 1998 book "Guerrilla Marketing: secrets for making big profits from your small business".

This term refers to a form of advertising promotion (we are still within the fourth decision-making lever of the marketing mix), and like buzz marketing, it can be labeled as a low-cost unconventional technique.

According to Levinson, in fact, guerrilla marketing is “a new way of advertising that allows achieving conventional goals through unconventional communications, investing high doses of creativity instead of large sums of money.”

At the core of this technique lies an extremely creative and aggressive use of content to impress (positively or negatively) the viewer.

In guerrilla marketing, it's important to shock the audience in an innovative and unconventional way. Using public places (always respecting the rules and laws, however), exploiting streets, ports, common spaces, in short, all you need is a brilliant idea and to stage it!

The singularity of guerrilla marketing is to catch the unsuspecting user off guard when they are not ready to receive the advertising message.

At that moment, namely when their own advertising consciousness is not active, practically when the "victim" has their defenses down.

Streets, subways, walls, staging grotesque and absurd situations with real actors: these are the stages and performers of guerrilla marketing. It's enough to hit a very narrow target audience to create a buzz effect and/or word-of-mouth that makes the skit go viral.

Not by chance it takes its name from a warfare technique that is rapid and incisive.

Epic examples of guerrilla marketing

A famous example of pure guerrilla marketing was staged by TNT Drama, a Belgian channel.

The idea is brilliant: unsuspecting passersby find themselves curious to press a button in the middle of the street. Those who do begin to witness Oscar-worthy drama scenes.

In just a few seconds, the scenes overlap with an elderly man falling out of an ambulance that just arrived, a semi-naked woman on a motorcycle zooms past the incredulous spectator, the ambulance attendant starts throwing punches at other bystanders. In short, the viewer is immersed in an episode of the channel without knowing it. 

The idea works, there is nothing to say, the astonishment of the passersby is the calling card for the brand's victory!

Here's the hilarious video:

There are also variations of the classic guerrilla marketing. We're talking about lip dub and ambush marketing.

The lip dub is a kind of flash mob focused on syncing the extras' lip movements with the music that characterizes the scenes of the choreography.

This is the fun video from the University of Quebec set to the tune of "I gotta feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas!

Finally, ambush marketing: literally marketing ambush.

It's a technique commonly used in major events where the company implementing it is not an official sponsor of the event but, in a striking and somewhat risky way, manages to get people talking about itself.

The ambush marketing by K-Swiss during the tennis tournament Roland Garros was interesting. They set up a smashed car outside the courts with a giant tennis ball branded with K-Swiss on top.

Another significant example of ambush marketing is more recent. We're talking about the infamous pitch invasion by Kinsey Wolanski, girlfriend of the owner of Vitaly Uncensored (a new adult content platform), during the last edition of the Champions League final.

There's no denying it, the move worked: thanks to the t-shirt flaunted by the beautiful influencer (before being tackled) with the channel's brand, from just 300,000 followers, she jumped to over 2 million within days, leading to exponential increases in visits to the website.

According to experts, a conventional marketing move during the Champions League final would have cost a whopping 4 million dollars.

Not bad for savings!