5 reasons Guerilla Marketing isn’t Viral Marketing
6 Pins has some nice examples of guerilla marketing up today. I especially like the above. Regarding the topic of Guerrilla Marketing, here a five reasons I didn’t include it on my upcoming Connect article about Viral Marketing:
- Guerrilla Marketing has more to do with promotional advertising than strategic marketing, although Guerrilla tactics are strategic in and of themselves.
- Guerrilla Marketing doesn’t spread itself as easily as other viral campaigns outside of word-of-mouth
- Guerrilla Marketing tends to be more direct than viral marketing (though not always)
- Guerrilla Marketing is most effective in local and/or regional markets as opposed to the global reach of viral marketing
- At its core, Guerrilla Marketing campaigns are nothing more than rogue, very creative, advertisements for a fleeting memory, though enough to generate short-term buzz and curiosity
That said, I really appreciate the creativity of most Guerrilla campaigns. United’s Ted Launch was one of the best examples of Guerrilla Marketing I’ve read about.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
i love it when people try to define guerilla marketing and they completely leave out any notion of how “guerilla” marketing got its name in the first place. (Guerilla warfare – is a method of unconventional combat by which small groups of combatants attempt to use mobile and surprise tactics (ambushes, raids, etc) to defeat a foe, often a larger, less mobile, army).
Guerilla marketing is for suprise/ambush of a consumer’s attention. It’s very strategic. Very calculated. Intentional. And, it has nothing to do with viral marketing.
Good post.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Guerilla marketing = cute, attention grabbing, or suprising; is calculated for great effect.
Viral marketing = takes on a life of its own; is hard/impossible to guarantee effectiveness.
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Here in Utah we actually are home to one of the greatest guerilla marketers of all time – Rick Bennett.
You can find him at http://www.rickbennett.com. You will get a kick out of his work that you see on his site.
Mark Newman
HireVue
March 11th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I agree with RussellPage. However ambush is just an area of Guerrilla and he miss a fact of guerrilla warfare that helps very much in defining guerrilla markting too. Guerrilla uses the landscape, the soil they know better than the enemy to win. Regarding guerrilla marketing, it uses the street as part of the campaing. One can say street but also the people, the birds… the city.