What is Guerrilla Marketing? Tactics and Examples to Inspire You

There are those who say that business is a lot like warfare — just with less deadly battles!

Phrases such as guerrilla marketing emphasize the metaphor: illustrating a strategy that involves stealthy, calculated, and creative campaigns designed to make a big impressions. Termed "guerrilla" for their use of tactics such as surprise, speed, aggression, mobility and an out-of-the-box approach to achieving their objectives.

If you're interested in adding a guerrilla marketing campaign to your marketing arsenal, read on! In this blog you'll learn all you need to know, plus some of our favorite real-life guerrilla marketing examples.

Table of Contents

• What is Guerrilla Marketing?

• Types of Guerrilla Marketing

• What Guerrilla Marketing is Not

• Six Guerrilla Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Brand

What is Guerrilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is defined as “a marketing tactic in which a company uses surprise and/or unusual interactions in order to promote a product or service. Guerrilla marketing is different than traditional marketing in that it often relies on personal interaction, has a smaller budget, and focuses on smaller groups of promoters that are responsible for getting the word out in a particular location rather than through widespread media campaigns.” (Investopedia)

It relies on using unconventional methods to get positive results from creative and low-budget efforts.

Guerrilla advertising is suitable for budgets both big and small

With their cost-effective and budget-friendly force-multiplier effect, guerrilla marketing ideas have definite benefits for start-ups and small businesses, which often struggle to afford more expensive and traditional advertising.

For this reason, it is also popular with non-profits looking for effective ways to inspire consumer spending without having to resort to expensive advertising.

Of course this isn't to say that big corporations can't also deliver an excellent guerrilla marketing campaign. Among those that may spring to mind are Coca-Cola, Burger King, and Red Bull. These companies are less concerned with budget, but guerrilla marketing is effective as a way to reach consumers through less overt marketing messaging — which can cause distrust or fatigue among target audiences.

Some common features of a successful guerrilla marketing strategy

The very definition of guerrilla marketing implies that there really aren't any rules as to how to go about crafting a guerrilla marketing campaign. That said, there are some common features that many successful guerrilla marketing campaigns share:

• Guerrilla marketing is creative, quirky, and has the element of surprise. It’s not something the consumer expects as they go about their day-to-day lives.
• It is relatively inexpensive.
• It hasn’t been done before, or will feel ‘new’ to the target audience.
• It’s in-your-face and creates buzz.
• It has the potential to go viral on social media.
• It has the potential to create publicity.
• It lends itself to word-of-mouth marketing opportunities.
• It may be perceived as a stunt.
• It’s edgy and pushes the boundaries in terms of what a more straight-laced client, conformist, or strict parent will approve of.
• It stirs emotion. Good guerrilla advertising may create happiness, excitement, surprise, or push people out of their comfort zone.

Types of Guerrilla Marketing

Here are some typical forms of marketing that maybe considered guerrilla:

Ambient marketing

This involves creatively using an out-of-home element to convey a promotional message. For example: using stairs, lifts, pavements, roadways, toilets, or public spaces like parks and squares.

Ambush marketing

Riding on the back of another organization’s marketing in order to promote your own message. An example would be leveraging the Fifa World Cup even if you aren’t an official tournament sponsor.

Experiential marketing

Defined as an activity that requires the audience to interact with, and experience, the brand in some way. Enabling a one-on-one experience with the consumer is ideal.

Pop-ups

Retail outlets can open a temporary location to drum up business and brand recognition. This tactic is often successful through pure bystander interest. Passerby may see a line forming and out of curiosity want to find out what all the fuss is about.

Stealth marketing

This is when a product or service is promoted to an audience without them being aware of it. Product placement in a movie is one such illustration. Sponsoring a social media influencer to post about a product or service without disclosing the nature of the relationship is another.

Street marketing

Simple distribution of flyers is a form of traditional street marketing, though it's not exactly "guerrilla". You could get more creative by using graffiti, reverse graffiti or other gritty, real-world, techniques.

What Guerrilla Marketing is Not

It's important to have a clear understanding of what guerrilla marketing isn't, especially because it can be a tempting way to go when budgets are tight, or you're looking for a provocative "all publicity is good publicity" ad campaign.

• It's not a strategy that can rely only on itself to achieve an objective. It should always be combined with other promotional tactics in order to be truly successful.
• It’s not an ideal strategy for brands that are risk-averse. If top management has no appetite for risk, or you’re in a more staid industry such as corporate banking or traditional financial services, this may not be for you.
• It’s not traditional media. Even if it’s a very creative, unusual, and innovative marketing or advertising campaign, it’s unlikely to qualify as ‘guerrilla’ if it relies mainly on traditional media such as print, TV, or radio advertising to convey the message.

Speaking to Entrepreneur, three marketing strategy experts gave their top tips on guerrilla marketing, and dispel some of the myths around this approach:

• Adam Salacuse of ALT TERRAIN, an experiential marketing activation agency: “Never aim to upset, scare, or provoke people in a negative way. The goal should be to implement something that people will embrace, enjoy and share with friends.”
• Brett Zaccardi of Street Attack, a non-traditional branding agency: “Don’t be contrived or too bland. Don’t try to be something you’re not.”
• Drew Neisser of Renegade Marketing, a B2B marketing agency: “Try not to annoy your target. [It] is generally not a good idea to do something that will cause someone on the team to go to jail.”

Six Guerrilla Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Brand

If your considering launching a guerrilla campaign, but still need a little direction or inspiration, take a look at these examples!

1. The dressing room in the street

Arkaden is a popular fashion mall in the center of Gothenburg, a city of around 600,000 people in Sweden. For the autumn fashion season, mall management wanted to show off the vast array of winter clothing and the many top brands on offer.

By creatively targeting people in the 25-35 age group, mainly women, they hoped to entice them to visit the mall and try on the autumn collection.

To create buzz and attract attention, the mall moved the dressing room out into the street and turned the ‘shells’ that typically hold an outdoor pavement advertisement, into mirrors for the customers to check out their fit. Then they added stylish photographs of some of the outfits on sale to the mirrors, along with the campaign tagline: "Get Fabulous".

The campaign was simple, effective, novel, and cost effective.

Image Source: Ads of the World

2. Putting the focus on the ‘invisible’ homeless

A cost-effective guerrilla marketing campaign is ideal for perennially cash-strapped NGOs. RaisingTheRoof, a Canadian charity that focuses on fighting homelessness, implemented a guerrilla marketing strategy by reminding busy city dwellers of the ubiquitous, yet often ‘invisible’ homeless youth all around them.

The NGO’s marketing team came up with hard-hitting — some might say ‘uncomfortable’ or unsettling — posters that were placed around the city in locations where homeless young people would typically sit…and typically be ignored.

The messages on the poster were stark and unambiguous: “If this poster were a homeless youth, most people wouldn’t even bother to look down.”

Does anything more need to be said? Is there any doubt as to what people should do? A guerrilla campaign at its best.

Image source: WeLoveAd

3. Open the door to a cool, frothy, beer

Guerrilla marketing campaigns don't always have to be serious. Polish beer brand Tyskie decided on a simple and light-hearted, yet attention-grabbing tactic to entice customers.

Why not surprise and delight consumers by turning a bland, functional, and everyday item into something that would raise a smile, while also emphasizing a brand message? Like a door handle, for instance?

In the course of a lifetime, we will probably open and close a door hundreds of thousands of times. And how many of those instances will we remember? Probably close to zero unless we happen to close the door on our fingers!

So Tyskie hit on an eye-catching idea: a branded door handle that resembled a frothy and appetizing mug of beer. The approach was simple, a little silly, and sure to brighten the day of everyone who entered.

4. Giant underpants on a New York City street

Some of the best guerrilla marketing ideas are a little crazy — but they're successful because people are often happy to embrace something off-the-wall in an all-too-serious world.

When GoldToe, an undergarment brand, looked for innovative and unconventional methods of promoting its new range of products, it decided to put items of clothing on well-known statues around New York City. Among them was the famous bronze Charging Bull statue in the city’s financial district.

The campaign went viral, due in part to the high-traffic locations and the large number of camera-ready tourists who frequent the Big Apple. Mainstream media also picked up on the campaign.

5. Millions enthralled by the world’s highest skydive

From a bronze bull to a Red Bull! There are some marketers who contend that the Red Bull-sponsored quest for the world’s highest skydive shouldn’t qualify as a classic guerrilla campaign because it certainly wasn’t low-cost.

But supporters point out that it met many other guerrilla marketing criteria: out of the ordinary; unique; edgy; ability to go viral; vast publicity potential; and a strong experiential element.

Red Bull has always based its brand-building around adrenaline sports and pursuing the extreme limits of human endeavor. The Stratos campaign took this to new heights (pun intended) when it partnered with daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner to jump from the edge of space and set a world record skydive of 39km (24 miles) above the earth. The Austrian also became the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.

It turned out to be a great guerrilla marketing example. The publicity and hype were phenomenal, social networks embraced and amplified the excitement, and people around the world were able to engage with the heart-stopping attempt live via a dedicated website, through YouTube, and on Twitter and Facebook.

As Baumgartner plummeted earthwards there were 8-million live views on YouTube.

Subsequently, the YouTube video has racked up 48 million views. You can watch it here: 

6. ‘Message to space’ tugs at the heart-strings

Hyundai motor company’s Message to Space campaign was a unique, grand, big-budget global affair. While Red Bull emphasized the fear factor, Hyundai tugged at the heart-strings and played on the love between a 13-year-old daughter and her faraway dad — an astronaut circling high above the earth on the International Space Station.

The company took 11 of its cars to a dry lake bed in Nevada and engaged a team of professional stunt drivers to use their tire tracks to create a message in the sand that read: ‘Steph (short for Stephanie) loves you!”

Given dad’s height above the earth — around 400km — the wording needed to be large enough to be seen by him as he passed overhead. The final message ended up measuring five square kilometers! This was subsequently recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest tire track image ever created.

International publicity around the event was huge, social media users loved it and the YouTube video continues to be a hit — attracting 72 million views so far. You can watch the viral video here: 

With the continued growth of social platforms for marketing, brands have greater opportunities to participate in guerrilla marketing tactics and connect directly with consumers. Use the tips from the blog to forge ahead and make a splash!