What is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla Marketing does not have a universal definition that would describe full scale of characteristics, because this marketing area has been still developing over time and it does not have so far such long history as marketing itself. However, Guerrilla marketing may be defined as a term for non-traditional or stealth marketing campaigns. (Guerrilla Communication). The guerrilla marketing may be defined more specifically as an aggressive, highly targeted and sometimes subversive; street-level promotional campaign intended to create unexpected and memorable encounters between a product and its consumers (Mohawk Paper Mills, Inc., 2006). Guerrilla marketers want to raise maximum of attraction – this fact is supported by definition of Guerrilla Marketing as an unconventional marketing or stunt designed to attract maximum attention (Media Smart UK, 2008).
Guerrilla Marketing example
Image 1 Resource: bloguerrilla - Guerrilla Marketing, YouTube, visited on July 22, 2009
Guerrilla Marketing roots
The term Guerrilla marketing was first used by Jay Conrad Levinson (more about him), who is considered to be a founder of this marketing area and he is often called as a guru of Guerrilla Marketing. Levinson, the author of number of books about Guerrilla Marketing and owner of a server about Guerrilla Marketing www.gmarketing.com, publishes articles and books about Guerrilla Marketing as a type of marketing approach for small businesses competing with big organisations in an area of innovate and sometimes extreme ideas marketing area (Delana, 2008).
The advertising until the late of 1970s was mostly influenced by high-focus on profit with often lack of creativity as Delana 2008 describes. The main goal of promotion changed to become more educative rather than entertaining and engaging during the first half of the 20th century. Over time, advertisers noticed that their advertising techniques were getting less effective.
Jay Conrad Levinson published the book called Guerrilla Marketing in the year 1984 and introduced a concept of marketing for small companies with limited budget with high expectations on results by receiving eminent positive response from audience. For the first time, small businesses were able to gain as much attention as the big players (Delana, 2008). Guerrilla Marketing has been applied from then by many companies in different industries targeting different target audience.