Guerilla War, Where?

Everywhere. Guerilla marketing is all around us (ok, maybe not those of us who live in Ottawa). It’s the wacky take on advertising that catches you off guard and uses shock tactics. I love guerilla marketing and I think it’s a fantastic way of catching people when they aren’t expecting it. Maybe it’s because I’m studying advertising, but I really appreciate the creative thinking and ingenuity that goes into these campaigns. If people can find a new way of getting a message across to me, I will commend them. I appreciate the skill, and will likely show that appreciation by supporting that company, or at least spreading the word by discussing my interaction with them.

Interaction is a huge part of guerilla marketing. A lot of billboard ads are seen and passed, channels are changed, radio stations are ignored. It’s all too easy to ignore marketing messages these days. The best way of getting customers is to gain interaction with them.

The well known Kleenex campaign is an example of this. Kleenex set up couches and a rug in main downtown areas and had a man sitting on one of the couches. He then proceeded to ask people walking by if they wanted to talk about anything. People would speak to the guy like a counselor, and when things got emotional, he handed them a Kleenex. Interaction with the product and the brand.

Another thing about guerilla marketing is its ability to gain high impact at a low price. Take the Daily Bread Food Bank’s campaign to launch their fall food drive a few years ago. They hired an unconventional advertising firm, called Smak, to come up with the concept. What they came up with was this: They purchased old useless fridges from scrap yards and dumps for minimal costs, and deposited them on the streets of downtown Toronto in the early hours of the morning. When the morning rush started, people were seeing a random fridge on their way to work. If opened, the fridge contained nothing. People would be confused, and continue on their way to work, puzzled. The stunt got a lot of attention and created a lot of buzz. Later in the day it was revealed that the fridges were placed on the streets to bring light to the fact that so many Torontonians cannot fill their fridges. It was a minimal cost to buy and deliver the fridges and the city ended up picking up the bill for removing them – as it turned out, security wasn’t fond of the fridges, and they were all gone by 3pm. I’m not sure of the exact numbers in food donations that year, but I know that it was a successful campaign.

If you have a higher budget, you might be able to pull off something like this: It’s pretty self-explanatory.



Guerilla marketing is awesome! I wish we had more of that creativity in Ottawa. I’d love to be the victim of one of these ploys.

(p.s. as for the sentiment expressed in the video “Urban Spam” shown in class today… It bums me out. People should be commended for their creative ideas and new ways of reaching the masses. But maybe that’s just my opinion.)