Digital Guerrillas
Marketing is one of my passions, I’m fascinated by it, and I certainly haven’t learned everything yet.
One thing that continues to fascinate me is guerrilla marketing. “Guerrilla Marketing is an advertising strategy that focuses on low-cost unconventional marketing tactics that yield maximum results.” (https://tinyurl.com/5r929m2) What I’ve learned more recently is that it can be more about making enough impact through the strategy so that it ends up on social media.
There is an obviousness to it, but some companies, artists, and celebrities, have this under wraps. Take the case study of Kelsy Karter who faked a tattoo on her face of Harry Styles to get the publicity she wanted for her new song aptly titled “Harry”. Other celebrities making various bold statements, or actions at least. Often it’s not about what they’re doing, its the fact that they got on your radar, that you’ll google them, and that hopefully their SEO and website cookies are working hard enough to get their next album or product in front of your face, and “consumed”. I bet Harry saw an uptick in searches for his name as well!
Other cases include KFC. They decided to introduce a new “influencer” version of the colonel back in April of this year. The idea was to “mock” influencers by showing how ridiculous the concept can be at times, but also to get people talking about KFC. The “new colonel” is a computer-generated version of the colonel that is super fit – almost young looking, and boasts a fabulous lifestyle as far as his photos are concerned. It caught attention when not only did KFC add photos of the virtual colonel to their Instagram, he’s got photos with other virtual models on the page. This is a bit of a stretch for guerilla marketing but goodness is it creative! (https://tinyurl.com/yyd7otq5)
Maybe you don’t think this is guerrilla marketing because it doesn’t have a physical presence so to speak. Or maybe, you don’t think your brand could do something like this. Well, it is guerrilla, but you can’t do it. Why? Because you need something different. One of the primary reasons why guerrilla marketing works is because it is unique. Challenge your marketing and think about how something completely unrelated to your brand even could help make your brand more visible if that’s what you’re looking for. Just be careful to stay on brand when appropriate.
Be aware though that just because people see the product of the plan, and therefore, your brand, doesn’t mean they’ll buy into it. I’ll admit I looked up Kelsy’s song afterward, but I haven’t been to KFC since the new “influencer” was announced, though I did go to the website to see if there were more details because, well, marketing.
