The Power & Influence of Guerilla Marketing By: Lucas Theaker December 2022
Last week on the SDSU campus, Levi’s set up a booth giving out free merchandise to students. Hundreds of students flowed through their pop-up event listening to the live DJ set and enjoying the games and prizes the various booths had to offer. Thousands chatted about Levi’s booth over social media to their friends, inadvertently giving them free word-of-mouth advertising. This is guerilla marketing.
What Is Guerilla Marketing?
Guerilla marketing is an advertising strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service. Whether giving out free samples of your product or hosting unorthodox publicity stunts, it all achieves the same goal: brand awareness.
More and more companies are catching onto this trend, especially smaller brands that do not have enormous marketing budgets to work with. Companies implementing guerilla marketing pride themselves on creative thinking and ingenuity in order to capture as much market share as they can.
How Does Guerilla Marketing Work?
One of the most famous and successful examples of guerilla marketing was executed by every college student's favorite brand: Red Bull. Knowing that it would be practically impossible to go up against the soft-drink companies that dominated the market in the 80s, Red Bull decided to employ a different approach. They understood that there was relatively no “energy drink” category that existed and decided to capitalize on this untapped market.
Instead of using mass-marketing similar to brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Red Bull targeted men ages 18-35 offering free samples at college parties and bars. Through specific product placement in trendy shops, clubs, and bars, people talked about Red Bull to their friends and the brand quickly became viral.
Today, Red Bull is viewed as one of the best marketing companies in the world. With a strategy centered around extreme sports, they utilize professional athletes from around the world to build their brand identity and awareness while still embodying their target audience. Red Bull is a shining example of how guerilla marketing tactics can evolve over time and increase in scale.
Key Takeaways from Guerilla Marketing
Anyone who is looking to create their own brand, but is concerned about the competition, that exists can take away an important lesson from companies like Red Bull and Levi’s. With creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, you can create a marketing campaign to entice customers and make them want to try your brand.
As smaller brands continue to use guerilla marketing tactics, there is no doubt that consumers will bear witness to thought-provoking and stunning product advertisements and interactions that capture their attention. Guerilla marketing is not completely free, but it is still one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand recognition. With creativity on the rise, guerilla marketing focus’ on capturing customers' attention in new and exciting ways.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/guerilla-marketing-examples
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Hz2F_S3Tl0Y/maxresdefault.jpg
