Guerrilla Marketing

"What Just Happened?!"

“The soul and essence of guerrilla marketing remain as always - achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.” 

– Jay Conrad Levinson

Consumers are exposed to an astounding number of advertisements every day. The truth of the matter is that, as human beings, we simply don’t have the mental capacity to process the sheer volume of all these messages so the majority of them are ignored. Advertisers have to think of new and exciting ways to grab people’s attention every day. So why not use guerrilla marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is, ‘a tactic in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service’. Guerrilla marketing is different than traditional marketing in that it often relies on personal interaction and has a smaller budget, and it focuses on smaller groups of promoters that are responsible for getting the word out in a particular location rather than on wide-spread media campaigns. 

Below are ten of the best guerrilla marketing campaigns that I have previously stumbled upon (in no particular order).

Rimmel

Frontline

Amnesty International

Spiderman 2

3M

Swiss Skydive

KitKat

MTV Switch

Folgers Coffee

The Sopranos

Haul Videos: A New Kind of Online Marketing

The best part of shopping seems to be, not racking up the goods themselves, but that moment when you get home and dig through the bags to try it all on again for your friends, family, and well just for the fun right?  Well that’s kind of the idea behind YouTube’s growing phenomenon known as the ‘Haul Video’.

A haul video goes a little something like this: a young girl sits in her bedroom showing off all her latest purchases in front of a webcam talking about mundane details like price, colour, features etc.  It seems as if something like this would hardly fathom that much attention right? Wrong! By late 2010, nearly a quarter of a million haul videos had been shared on YouTube alone. According to Chelsea Maughan, a YouTube spokesperson, videos uploaded to the site with 'haul' in the title have almost doubled over the past four years.  

According to a recent article in the guardian it seems in this crowded world Bethany Mota is queen. Her online empire consists of 1.2 million Twitter followers, 2.3 million Instagram followers, and 5.1 million YouTube subscribers. Check out one of her videos here:

So what does this have to do with marketer's? Well for a start, haul videos are a great way to connect with potential customers and showcase products. The hauler gets some cool free stuff and the company gets free publicity. Everybody wins! Leading retailers like J.C. Penny, Forever 21 and American Eagle are just a few of those that are capitalizing on the trend, offering girls gift cards to shop at their stores with the expectation that they will post haul videos bragging about their latest retail hauls. J.C. Penny took it one step further by hiring at least six young girls to produce back to school haul videos. Target has also created their own mock "Happy Haul-idays" clips.

So what do you guys make of this phenomenon? I have to confess that after spending a whole afternoon doing some research, I can see how some find them highly addictive and entertaining. I'd love to hear your comments. Are these young girls marketing opportunities waiting to be snapped up or are they all just dying fads?

Product Placement

Why Does E.T. Love Reese's Pieces So Much?

We are all familiar with the scene. A young boy coaxing an abandoned alien to his room with a trail of candy. But not just any candy; Reese's Pieces. Welcome my friends, to the world of product placement.

In a (very official) nutshell, product placement is: 'the promotion of branded goods and services through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through appearances in film, television, or other media'. When you see a product or service appear in a TV show, or in a film, the company behind it has usually (but not always) paid for their brand to make an appearance. In the case of Steven Spielberg's E.T., Hershey agreed to produce a million dollars' worth of advertisements for the film and in exchange Hershey could use E.T. in its own ads. Within two weeks of the films premier the sales of Reese's Pieces increased by 65%.

Today, advertisers have taken product placement to a whole new level. It has expanded from movies to include TV shows, video games, music videos and even books and plays. The following are just a few favourites of mine.

Television:

The writers of NBC's '30 Rock' take a different approach to product placement, poking fun at it with a tongue-in-cheek attitude as can be seen in the hilarious clip here: 30 Rock's Snapple Plug. Rather than hate the shamefully obvious product plugs, viewers and companies have come to love these over-the-top gags.

Video Games:

Video game product placement looks to be the next big step in advertising. One of the most prominent examples in video game history is Sega's 'Crazy Taxi'. The basic aim of Crazy Taxi was to make as much money as you could by picking up passengers and dropping them off  to their selected destinations. While passengers could request generic locations such as the railway station or the police station, they could also choose branded locations like Tower Records, the Levi's Store, Pizza Hut or KFC. 

Books:

Yes that's right, even the written word isn't immune to the world of product placement. One of the largest genres to feature product placement is children's learning books. Well known brands like Cheerios, Twizzlers, M&M's, Hershey's Skittles and Oreo have all jumped on the band wagon. 

Music Videos:

Lately product placement has become as much as an occurrence in music videos as the singers themselves. My personal favourite has to be Lady Gaga's 'Telephone', which may as well be a nine minute infomercial. The video features numerous brands those of which include; HP Envy 'Beats Limited Edition' Laptop, Heartbeats Earphones, Chevrolet, Little Debbie's Honey Bun, Polaroid, Wonderbread, PlentyOfFish, Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Miracle Whip and Chanel. Bringing us a total of eleven different products - phew, no wonder the video is so long.