Guerrilla strategy

Creativity - the essential element

Guerilla marketing is particularly suited for NGOs and advocacy groups because it emphasizes creativity, imagination and resourcefulness over big budgets and access to mass media. Guerilla marketing can be low-tech and require very little initial investment. It’s also a way of circumventing other types of controls. For instance, when a protest is not permitted, guerilla marketing can make a message heard in other ways.

Get people to participate

Guerilla marketing can also be interactive, asking participants to complete an action. Examples include:

• tearing off a paper to reveal the image underneath
• sending an SMS text message to a special number
• wearing a certain color and converging at a predetermined location, or
• distributing a stencil template for supporters to cut and paint around town.

What forms can it take?

Guerilla marketing can take a variety of forms: brush and paint, spray
can and stencil, photocopy or color printout, wheat paste, performance art, flash mob, etc. There's
no one way to do it. Let you imagination run wild, then bring it back to your Strategy to check if it will work.

Where accessible, online distribution is a great way of sharing printable resources. Posting your materials on the internet can be an effective way of spreading your message and campaign beyond your usual supporters. Images and printable templates for stickers, stencils, or signage can be downloaded by sympathetic viewers and further disseminated. Printing up a large number of materials and sending out a call for help via email or SMS can also bring in help to disseminate your campaign materials.

Organizations can even sponsor “open calls” for poster, stencil or action ideas that other supporters can access and reproduce on their own.

When should you use guerilla marketing?

Guerilla marketing works best in a densely populated, public places where people will encounter your message. Places that work well are city streets, college campuses, shopping malls, toilet doors, public parks or plazas.

Make them laugh

Humour is also a particularly powerful way of touching people who may initially disagree or disapprove of your message as well as those who might usually ignore such messages. Parody, caricature and satire can puncture the reverence and gravitas that powerful offices command—and open the door for criticism.

Checklist

Before undertaking your action, it makes sense to review a few things.

• Who is your target audience? Where is the best place to reach them? What is the best time of day or season?
• What is your desired outcome? What do you want your audience to experience or do?
• Do you have the resources and capacity to undertake your action? Do you need outside professionals, volunteers?
• How visible is your target location? Different types of people traffic different neighborhoods, and different locations have different safety, security and accessibility concerns.