Why guerrilla marketing works
We are used to having information thrown at us everyday, that at some point, we zone out and stop absorbing it all. Guerrilla Marketing is an advertising strategy that focuses on low-cost unconventional marketing tactics. It is about taking the consumer by surprise, making an indelible impression and creating copious amounts of social buzz.
Most guerrilla marketing campaigns aim to strike the consumer at a more personal and memorable level, making a far more valuable impression on consumers, in comparison to traditional forms of advertising and marketing.
The recently released horror movie ‘It’ has received a lot of praise for its clever guerrilla marketing campaign. The movie involves Pennywise the clown, who is often seen holding a red balloon. A few days before the film’s release, a number of red balloons were seen attached to drainage grates in cities around the world. The balloons were accompanied by a stencilled chalk note saying “it is closer than you think” with the hashtag “#itmovie”. A number of murals were also painted featuring artist’s impressions of the clown’s face. This campaign received a lot of attention from social media users, and probably contributed to the films record breaking box office return of US$123,403,419.00 over its opening weekend, making it the highest grossing horror film of all time.
If you’re hoping to gain similar traction through your own campaign, you will need a strong social drive to back up your campaign. The thing to note with this campaign is the team has created content online to match the real-life experience with these balloons. When viewers see the marketing, companies need to be strategic and have somewhere where they can go online and find out what it’s all about. The hashtags in the campaign that tie-in via the stencils serve a dual purpose, because it provides an avenue for viewers to locate more info and can be used as a way to drive user generated content around the movie. It’s also a way for them to measure the engagement for future campaigns. Advertising with emotion involved has been proven to get viewers more motivated and interested, and this invoked strong emotions in some people because it’s pretty creepy.
The recently released horror movie ‘It’ has received a lot of praise for its clever guerrilla marketing campaign. The movie involves Pennywise the clown, who is often seen holding a red balloon. A few days before the film’s release, a number of red balloons were seen attached to drainage grates in cities around the world. The balloons were accompanied by a stencilled chalk note saying “it is closer than you think” with the hashtag “#itmovie”. A number of murals were also painted featuring artist’s impressions of the clown’s face. This campaign received a lot of attention from social media users, and probably contributed to the films record breaking box office return of US$123,403,419.00 over its opening weekend, making it the highest grossing horror film of all time.
If you’re hoping to gain similar traction through your own campaign, you will need a strong social drive to back up your campaign. The thing to note with this campaign is the team has created content online to match the real-life experience with these balloons. When viewers see the marketing, companies need to be strategic and have somewhere where they can go online and find out what it’s all about. The hashtags in the campaign that tie-in via the stencils serve a dual purpose, because it provides an avenue for viewers to locate more info and can be used as a way to drive user generated content around the movie. It’s also a way for them to measure the engagement for future campaigns. Advertising with emotion involved has been proven to get viewers more motivated and interested, and this invoked strong emotions in some people because it’s pretty creepy.
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Udit Khanna
31 Oct 2018Thank you for sharing such an awesome post...
ReplyGuerrilla Marketing is just something which requires creative minds without which your marketing strategy can't succeed. If you don't know how to do Guerrilla Marketing then don't do it. The concept of this type of marketing is to include your product in public day to day life in a natural way.