GUERRILLA MARKETING

FOUR WHAT-NOW CREATIVE STRATEGIES

Guerrilla Drawing by Arthur Winters
Drawing by Arthur Winters

You say Guerrilla, I say Viral, he says Flash Mob, and she says Crowd Sourcing … Maybe we should say: “Let’s call the whole thing off”? But, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle and we can’t stop the race launched forward by social networking and all things experiential.

1. MISSION MINDING – Minding the brand mission now means paying continuous attention to communicating the brand mission clearly, especially through social media. Here’s where you learn “what-now” is the brand’s story in consumers’ minds, and to use this to create new breakthrough creative strategies.

2. BRAND RECRUITING – Recruiting an army of customers who can enlist consumers is now a prime marketing objective. Instead of a movie star or celebrity athlete telling the brand story, guerrilla marketing strategies are created to encourage loyal customers to communicate “what-nows” to recruit other consumers/customers/users.

3. AWARDING BRAND BRAVERY – Tactics for awarding products or services to customers who create interactions of their own to win consumers to their favorite brand: A mission-driven brand should search for, recognize and reward those who have made that brand mission their own.

4. POSITIONING SPECIAL FORCES – Guerrilla marketers recognize that their approach to marketing needs to move toward the front lines. They use “what-now” breakthroughs rather than relying on past strategies, tactics and executions for positioning power. Creative strategies can encourage loyal customers to create stronger referral maneuvers.

It’s one of the realities in today’s brand management that guerrilla marketing is an ongoing reinvention of what works now in social media, public relations, e-tailing and customer experience. “What’s –now” must precede an ongoing what’s next. Largely due to the predominance of social media, branding strategies can be about giving your loyalists an incentive to enlist others in the brand wars.

Creative guerrilla marketing wins over potential customers who come in contact with this brand’s story – Big Pilot Watches. The breakthrough strategy places the product/brand onto a person’s wrist while they are on an airport transport bus. Also a good city transit campaign that works to defeat the competition in the watch ad battle for attention.

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.