Guerrilla Marketing

GUERRILLA MARKETING

Guerrilla marketing is a fast-growing unconventional way of performing marketing activities on a very low budget. Jay Conrad Levinson is its "creator", and has influenced many companies into implementing this into their regular marketing criteria. Guerrilla marketing is a great way to introduce a new company or product and also is best for smaller businesses. In my personal opinion I think it has a very strong impact in today's society. Mostly due to the fact that instead of money as the primary investment of traditional marketing, Guerrilla Marketing empowers time, energy, and imagination. Some examples which most consumers have been exposed to are word-of-mouth campaigns, billboards, T-shirts, flags, direct-mail campaigns, telemarketing, and personal canvassing to name a few.

One use of Guerrilla Marketing that I was directly affected by occurred when I was living in Leeds, England last year. In October of 2003, Smirnoff, the Vodka producer, used steam jets and stencils to decorate a busy underpass in Leeds without prior permission from the Government. Stylish slogans and catchphrases were placed on the underpass to promote their new product Smirnoff Ice to the young public. However, the Government branded Smirnoff's guerrilla campaign as "vandalism" and they issued a cleaning fine on the company which in the end cost about several thousand pounds. Smirnoff apologized for not asking for permission and agreed to clean the underpass once their campaign had finished. This directly affected me, because coming and living in Leeds, 2 years after this occurred, they now have very restrictive policies on Guerrilla Marketing. In one of my marketing classes I was taking at Leeds University, we were put in groups and asked to hand out flyers to promote the new University Bar room. The flyers offered alcoholic drink specials and the picture could be viewed as an adult message, but only to someone's grandmother. Unfortunately our teacher got in a bit of trouble because apparently some of the flyers made it into the hands of younger people under the legal drinking age of 18. So this turned out to be a bad class project, but it certainly is a great example of Guerilla marketing and its limitations. It is now a top priority to get prior permission from the Government if your business wants to implement such a type of marketing campaign. Despite