In the next article we are going to see in detail what guerrilla marketing is, social guerrilla and finally we will analyze some guerrilla marketing campaigns for social.
What is guerrilla marketing?
The term “guerrilla” has its origins in Spain and was first used in 1800 to describe the resistance and rebellion action of Spanish militias against French troops.
Today the term guerrilla has taken on a completely different meaning, thanks to JC Levinson who first used the term in his 1984 book to indicate a set of low-budget communication tools whose use is aimed at promoting products or brands through the use of tricks. that can surprise, obviously in a positive way, the public and capture the attention of the media. In fact, Levinson was aimed at small and medium-sized companies, which, since they did not have large capital to invest, like large companies or multinationals, had to focus on strategies with strong creative content to attract a large part of the public. .
It is important to point out that guerrilla marketing, despite having the objective of generating a surprise effect in the public, is not based solely on creativity, but like any strategy it requires careful planning, essential to respond to one of the basic principles. of the guerrilla, which is the news.
When talking, but especially implementing a guerrilla marketing strategy, two important elements must be taken into account:
- the importance of direct action, because it is in action on the ground where the message is transmitted
- generate the surprise effect and consequently the WOM (word of mouth), or word of mouth.
Guerrilla marketing comes in different variants, let's go into some types of guerrilla that are also useful for social guerrilla marketing actions.
The first variant of guerrilla marketing that we want to analyze is sticker marketing , This consists of placing large quantities of stickers with the company's brand and not only in places with a lot of traffic. It is a form of rapid communication, whose objective is to obtain great visibility and make the observer remember the design, logo, icon or message that you want to transmit. Stickering is also used to develop social guerrilla marketing strategies. An example is in 2006, where on the occasion of World Water Day, Green Belgium installed 500 stickers in 9 cities in Belgium and Mexico City, in various places such as bars, restaurants, cinemas, public bathrooms, universities and stations.
The second variant of guerrilla marketing is covert or stealth marketing, also useful for social strategies. It is an unusual strategy, it does not intend, as in the first case, to show the product or logo explicitly but on the contrary it does so in a silent, hidden way. A concrete example is the strategy developed by WWF to raise awareness about the problem of deforestation. The association used a paper dispenser from a public bathroom. The container was perforated, with the outline of South America: as the green paper towels were taken, it was seen that its level dropped within the outline of South America, showing the phenomenon of deforestation.
Guerrilla marketing for social
In 1983, shortly after the introduction of the term guerrilla marketing developed by Levinson in his best-seller, a Californian musical group began using guerrilla marketing to oppose mass music and the power of the media.
From this moment on, guerrilla marketing also began to be used to denounce and raise the consciousness of the masses on issues of social importance with the aim of triggering positive behaviors for the collective good.
Below we see some of the objectives of the social guerrilla:
- influence behaviors : The objective is to achieve a change in the behavior of the individuals targeted by social guerrilla action. From some studies by Kotler and Lee, this would be possible only by accepting the new behavior, understanding that the previous behavior was harmful, abandoning the incorrect behavior, and acquiring the new one.
- bring a common benefit : one of the objectives of social guerrilla warfare is to influence and sensitize the individual to achieve a collective benefit. Social marketing differs from guerrilla marketing due to the ultimate goal it pursues, the first has the objective of influencing to generate a change, the second has the ultimate goal of influencing the target it addresses for an economic return.
- focus on the goal : In social guerrilla actions, people are the direct beneficiaries of the objectives to be achieved.
Examples of guerrilla social marketing
We see below just a few of the many examples of guerrilla marketing aimed at raising awareness about social and environmental issues.
The campaign "The lesson of the ramp" launched by a Buenos Aires driving school that, to condemn wild behavior in the car such as parking in front of ramps for the disabled, decided to take wildly parked cars as protagonists and transform them into wooden ramps where the Wheelchair athlete Juan María Nimo performed his acrobatics. The athlete's scenes were filmed and posted on social media, enjoying considerable success and strong word of mouth.
Another case that we are going to analyze is the enormous poster that appeared just a few weeks ago in Piazza San Carlo in Turin. The writing had the following sentence "I still love you", below the letter "a" but the sentence continued with the word "land." The writing, which was immediately uploaded to social networks arousing great interest, was claimed by the authors, Gli Eugenio in Via di Gioia, a musical group that explained how the message was a declaration of love for the Earth. The objective was to denounce the growing environmental degradation that our planet is experiencing due mainly to the actions carried out by man.
