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4 Components of Innovative Guerrilla Marketing: Clever Marketing for
Clever Entrepreneurs
http://wisepreneur.com/entrepreneurship/4-components-of-innovative-guerrilla-marketing-clever-marketing-for-clever-
entrepreneurs
Today’s marketing is sophisticated and
expensive. More and more it is difficult for
emerging businesses to compete effectively with
the likes of Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch,
and Pizza Hut. However, entrepreneurs, start-
ups, new businesses and small enterprises can
use low-cost guerrilla marketing techniques that
have a similar impact as large-budget campaigns.
Some of the most important features of
innovative guerrilla marketing include
storytelling, viral marketing, customer interaction, and buzz. Here is an excellent definition of
guerrilla marketing from Wikipedia:
“The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that
relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla
marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional; potentially interactive; and consumers
are targeted in unexpected places. The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique,
engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral. The term
was coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing.”
So what is Guerrilla Marketing? It is a marketing strategy with little money, but with a lot of
cleverness and smartness! The best way to understand Guerrilla Marketing is to look at an
example. One of our favorites is a promotion for Hell Pizza in New Zealand. Here’s the way the
company used Guerrilla Marketing in a recent campaign:
1.Storytelling The company presents a story of a pizza delivery man who must find his
way through zombies to deliver pizza.
2.Viral Marketing The story is placed in a YouTube movie to capture the advantages of
this popular social medium.
3.Customer Interaction As the story unfolds, the viewer gets to decide which action the
pizza man should take on his adventure.
4.Buzz A friend sent Ari the YouTube link. He watched it and enjoyed it, and then Ari
forwarded Calvin and to other friends …. and we now are writing about this campaign for
you. This is buzz marketing!
We hope you will enjoy watching your pizza from hell:
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi
2. 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p1yBlV7Ges&feature=player_embedded
Here’s a final but important point. Guerrilla Marketing is like a double-edged sword, it can make
your company known, and maybe make you rich, or it can severely hurt your company. A bad
Guerrilla Marketing campaign in the best case is nothing more than spam, and in the worst case is
professional suicide. If people laugh at your business or your product or if your video irritates
people, you will have a negative buzz on the Internet that will probably last for a long, long time.
Our recommendation is to test your campaign with friends or some customers, and if they do not
enjoy it, something is wrong. You then have a chance to change it before going to the Internet.
After you tweak the campaign and get a cool combination, put it online and have some serious
guerrilla fun!
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi