Guerrilla Marketing: Creating Reactions

GAP: "Shopping Turned on it's Head"
Guerrilla Marketing Example

 In Vancouver, Cossette West came up with this marketing campaign to attract customers to the GAP store. For 4 days, anyone who walked by the store found their "Shopping turned on it's head." The GAP logo, a hot dog cart and cars were all flipped upside down. The display windows, the mannequins inside and many other things were turned upside down for the campaign. For more on this campaign click the video below.

 What is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla Marketing is an unconventional type of promotions. Typically this type of marketing is done with a relatively small budget and is a good alternative to traditional marketing. Guerrilla Marketing relies on unique and unusual strategies to gain a customer's attention. The promotion is placed in a new and unconventional place to attract attention. The whole goal of Guerrilla Marketing is to create a unique, thought-provoking, and engaging reaction that will cause the customer to spread the word through face to face or online interactions. The idea to this strategy is to cause a buzz with consumers.

Tips for Guerrilla Marketing:

• Use original ideas.Consumers think they've heard it all, show them they're wrong.
• Cause an emotional reaction.
• Use online tools. Using such tools as blogs, websites, and social interaction sites can help cause awareness of the product/idea.
• Be clever. An original idea is not enough, you must convey the idea in a clever way. Consumers see millions of ads, make yours different.
• Use humor, if appropriate.
• Give consumers a way to interact. If you let the consumer interact with your product (either online or in person) it causes the consumer to identity with your product in a deeper level.
• Make consumers want to interact. If your idea/product isn't stirring enough, they won't take the next step to interact, or buy.
• Communicate clearly. You know what you're saying, but does the consumer? Your goal here is zero ambiguity.

It's important to remember that Guerrilla Marketing is not just for billboards, in-store displays, or out-of-home promos. There are no traditional  ways of using Guerrilla Marketing, it's all about being non-traditional. A great example of this comes from a PDF resource provided by M&I Bank;

“For a real estate staging seminar, I walked in with my
hair in curlers, wearing a bathrobe with magazines
and stuffed animals pinned to it. I asked, ‘How many of
you are trying to sell a house that looks like this?’” Her
audiences remember her and come back for more.

There is no correct way to use Guerrilla Marketing, only an effective way to use it. Make it work for your business, using your unique selling proposition. 

For more on Guerrilla Marketing, read over the pdf resource from M&I.