Guerilla marketing

Guerilla marketing is an unconventional intervention in public or commercial space to spread your message to an extended audience. This section will present you basic principles and provide you some ideas and examples to consider when choosing this medium as an strategy to convey your advocacy work.

Guerilla marketing can take the form of a personal letter purposefully left on the back seat of a bus, a billboard altered to subvert its message, a banner hung from a bridge, or costumed hero handing out bundled letters of protest, tied with a bow. Guerilla marketing gets attention because it is out of the ordinary -- both atypical and unexpected. It uses surprise to capture the attention and imagination.

It can take a number of approaches:

• quiet and personal
• large and bombastic
• humorous and satirical
• or simple and sober

Guerilla marketing is a direct action in the image environment -- a disruption of the status quo. Guerilla marketing can work in conjunction with other types of campaigning but is particularly attractive when other forms of media or demonstration are not feasible, accessible, or affordable -- or when other forms of campaigning have been met with apathy.

Guerilla marketing makes dissent visible in an otherwise controlled environment. It emboldens others who are sympathetic to your message but may not have the courage or means to declare it publicly.

While guerilla marketing may initially reach people who witness an action first-hand, it can reach others as stories of unexpected encounters spread through word of mouth, on the internet or even reporting in mainstream media.

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fit with your goals, audience, situation and messages. Go there
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