Guerrilla marketing: Types and Examples

There is a quote ' Sometimes you have to get off track to discover a better track' which means you need to find better ways to do what you are doing. This is what Guerrilla advertisements means for.

Guerrilla Marketing is inspired by the Guerrilla warfare, the irregular tactics of ambushing, raiding, sabotaging etc. by smaller armed forces to fight large traditional army. Guerrilla marketing similarly is also tactics used by the companies like ambushing, viral marketing, wild posting etc that are irregular than the traditional ways of advertising.

There are 9 distinct types or styles of advertising in guerrilla marketing and they are as follows:

• Ambient marketing: Use of environment or locations to draw out the engagement marketing with the customers. Examples like Copenhagen Zoo bus campaign 2010, Sprite soda machine shower campaign.

  

  
  
  
• Ambush marketing: Using the audience of an on going event and advertisement of product and services without the consent of event sponsors or without being official sponsor to the event in a noticeable way is ambush marketing. An airlines brand from South Africa named Kulula was not sponsor to the FIFA world cup 2010 that happened in Africa but it described itself as 'Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What' and contained images of football, stadiums, vuvuzela. 
• Buzz advertising: Buzz marketing is generally viral marketing technique with word of mouth regarding a product or campaign mostly through the use of social medias, use of influencers, creating demand and rumour spreading. Lamborghini manufactures limited numbers of cars every year and for their sophistication and features that create buzz for customers and get sold out fast.
• Stealth Marketing: One of the low cost marketing techniques that involves advertising to customers without letting them know that they are being marketed. It simply is product placement in customers mind. For an example of use of Fedex parcels in movie 'Cast away'.
  
  
  
• Street Marketing: The use of streets as platform to market the product and services like with use of posters, pamphlets, fliers etc. apart from that use of Graffities, Roadshows etc. also comes under street marketing. For an example use of Sofas in bus stops by Ikea can be best examples of street marketing.

Having said about the types of guerrilla marketing types and looking into some examples. Lets look to the overall pros and cons of the Guerrilla marketing techniques.

Pros of Guerilla marketing techniques are as follows:

1. Low cost of execution.
2. Best way to creative thinking.
3. Grows with the growth of word by mouth.
4. Best way for Product placement.

Cons of Guerrilla marketing are as follows:

1. Misunderstanding of messages.
2. Unfavourable and unpredictable obstacles.
3. Authority interventions
4. Potential Backslash

So these are the overall pros and cons for the Guerrilla marketing.

In conclusion Guerrilla marketing are best form of marketing if executed correctly and mitigating the cons related to the Guerrilla marketing.