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Guerilla Marketing is not a new concept and one that was largely brought to the marketing mix by Jay Levinson but the industry has changed this niche channel and often been abused.
Advertising has changed over the years, from rational information, to absolute false claims, to educational and then to the entertaining ads we see today. Jay Conrad Levinson, the author of many books on this subject, is credited as the father of Guerrilla Marketing. His ideas paved the way for small businesses to compete in the marketing arena with the big companies, creating an age of innovative and sometimes unorthodox ideas. Levinson highlighted that it wasn’t just about creating a buzz. Brands had to be able to back up their message with relevance and quality.
The best thing about Guerilla is that it radically cuts through mass media and enables the small guys to make just as big an impression as the big guys. Guerilla has evolved over time and it’s not uncommon to see the idea piggy backing other ‘channels’, for example, brand references in music. But even though it was first pioneered for the smaller business, big corporate companies have since jumped on the wagon, however, this can be seen by the market as the corporations being unscrupulous.
The big companies have leveraged the use of Guerilla into what we now call viral marketing, but again, if these campaigns are not properly thought through, the unorthodox nature that attracts viral sharing in the first place can backfire on them. Take Ford Cars for instance. Ford created a viral marketing campaign for the SportKa the Ka’s ‘evil twin’. This video was distributed around the internet showing a pigeon in a leafy suburban street. It flies off over the Ka’s bonnet, seemingly risking the Ka becoming a victim of the pigeon’s droppings. So, the car attacks and flips it’s bonnet, knocking the pigeon unconscious. Now as you can expect, this enticed quiet a few animal rights concerns as largely glorifying animal cruelty
The worse was yet to come though because very soon after this clip had circled the world, a second clip followed, this time decapitating a cat’s head, not surprisingly, Ford denied all claim to this clip. Now again, here we have to question the old saying that ‘there’s no such thing as bad PR’ has the shocking content which has driven the campaign virally become it’s undoing?
It was claimed that no pigeon was harmed in the making of the video.
