What Can Guerilla Marketing Teach Us?

By Yosef Solomon on Oct 25, 2011

The concept of Guerrilla Marketing has always been of interest to me. To be able to spread an idea or message through creative expressions in everyday life is simply amazing. After doing some thorough research online, I still haven’t found any obvious patterns. The only commonalities I’ve seen through various Guerrilla Marketing tactics is the magic balance between authenticity, entertaining content and relevant timeliness. These three very different elements seem to harness the soul of Guerrilla Marketing.

In my latest entrepreneurial venture, Fizzm (currently a stealth Web/Mobile app), I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out unique marketing tactics that utilize the essence of my message. It’s a lot a more difficult than I could’ve ever imagined, but at the same time allowed me to push the limits on how I see Fizzm being accepted. What I’ve come to realize through this process is that, like most marketing campaigns, an interesting story must be told through whatever message I put out. The message must be relevant to my brand and interesting enough for strangers to share with their friends.

Some of my favorite examples of Guerilla Marketing, are the Improv Everywhere videos on YouTube that showcase professional actors in public settings, performing chorogrephed musicals and dance numbers. Flash mobs as their popularly called, are almost instantly recongnized by notable news outlets, publications and the general public through social networks. They surprise, entertain, inform and showcase their creativity through thoughtful execution.

The real reason I’m writing about Guerilla Marketing is to cover two points that have been become of interest to me:
1. To flesh out the importance and meaning of Guerilla Marketing
2. To try and understand what makes some GM campaigns successful and others go virtually unnoticed.

The answer to the 2nd point can be varied and extremely unpredictable. Yes, adding a celebrity to a viral video about your company may increase the number of views to your site. Or creating a contest of sorts may incentivize your audience, but in my 3-4 years of experience in Internet Marketing, it’s hard come up with the magic formula that will essentially blowup your brand to Rebecca Black proportions.

In the end, I don’t believe that there is one secret to making your Guerilla Marketing campaign a success. But rather a sequence of events, articles, videos, conversations on Twitter etc.. all encompassing of your brand identity.