Back around 2005, I was reading just about every marketing book I could get my hands on and the hottest topic was guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is really hard to define, but the best way I can describe it is doing something really strange and unexpected to get attention. Think publicity stunts, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be related to traditional publicity. At the time, I was working for a record label and we didn’t have much of a marketing budget, so the idea of doing things differently was about all I could do to help differentiate my company and our artists from the competition.
For one record, we basically bribed DJ’s to play a particular song to try and get it to chart. We ran a contest in conjunction with Gibson (which sponsored one of our artists), where every time they played the song, the first caller could win a chance to win a Gibson Dobro. Well, it worked. We ended up getting 50+ radio stations from around the world to participate and ended up giving the Dobro to some guy in Chicago. That song went #1 and that artist won “Dobro Player of the Year” that year. Cool. We also had an album titled “New Tattoo” where we got temporary tribal tattoos printed. We sent them to DJ’s with the promo records. We had a band named Wildfire, and we printed album art on a book of matches. When you opened the book of matches, it had the track listing. I think I still have a book of those matches around here somewhere… I don’t really think any of those examples really qualify for guerrilla marketing, but they were inspired by all of the crazy guerrilla marketing that was going on at the time.
For a while, guerrilla marketing was my jam. Although it’s not really something that I do much anymore, I’ve got a serious appreciation for people that can pull this off well. Guerrilla marketing is still a kind of nebulous term. It’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. Regardless, I’m taking a look back at the past 20+ years to hand-pick some of my favorite guerrilla marketing campaigns.
Burger King Liking Old Tweets
Burger King was my first non-farm job. At the time, I was an incredibly sheltered 15-year old and wow, did working at a Burger King open my eyes to the world. I’ll save those stories for another time, but damn, their guerrilla marketing has been on point for a LOOONNNNGGGG time. They’ve got the King. They cancelled the Whopper. They had the Subservient Chicken (I’ll get to that later). Let’s start off with an example from 2019. I love this one because it’s about the simplest and cheapest thing they could have ever done.
So, in December of 2019, Burger King started liking tweets. However, they didn’t just start liking random tweets, they started liking tweets of pretty big influencers. The catch? The tweets that they started liking were from a decade earlier. Unless you live under a rock, you understand that when someone likes a tweet, you get a notification. These people naturally got a notification that Burger King liked their tweet…from 10 years ago. Like any living, breathing human being, they were like, “WTF is Burger King doing liking a tweet of mine from 10 years ago. That’s weird AF,” and they naturally tweeted something to that effect.
So why is this important? Well, they just got someone with millions of followers to tweet about them. They were not only tweeting about Burger King; they were starting a conversation about Burger King. Conspiracy theories swirled and people started talking. Brilliant.
I love this campaign because it is so stupid. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. Honestly, I’d love to be the person that had to go into the board of directors to pitch this idea. Who am I kidding, I bet they just did it and never told their boss until it worked. What did they have to lose? It’s about as low risk as they could get. The only hard part would be trying to beat that ROI.
Red Balloons Tied to Sewer Grates
So, this one is kind of creepy. For the reboot of the movie “It” in 2017, a team in Sidney, Australia tied some red helium balloons from sewer grates throughout the city. Near the grates were notes stenciled in chalk saying, “It is closer than you think #itmovie”. If you know anything about the movie It, well, he lives in the sewer. He also is pictured with red balloons…a lot. This campaign was simple, creepy, and got a lot of attention all over the world, not just in Sidney. Then, people just started doing it all over the place. Why? Well, because…people. That’s why.
Ikea Guerrilla Manhattan
In 2006, Ikea decided to give Manhattan a makeover. But it just wasn’t a little makeover. It involved 600 city blocks and 670 individual tactics. It involved products in subway trains, makeovers of bus stops, furniture at payphones (yeah, those used to be a thing), plates and outdoor seating at food trucks, dog water bowls, random hammocks, and a whole lot more. Each tactic had a sign that said, “Good design can make the every day a little better.” They also had a website, the now-defunct everydayfabulous.com which featured every exhibit and where you could find them.
Domino’s Filling Potholes
Domino’s is famous for telling everyone how their pizza used to suck. And yes, it did sort of suck, and yes, it is definitely better. Well played, Domino’s, well played. However, in 2018, they took on a more philanthropic tone and decided to take on an infrastructure project by sponsoring the filling of potholes all around the US. They called the campaign “Paving for Pizza”. Why? Well, when you hit a pothole transporting a pizza, it can mess up the pizza. They even (still) have an interactive tool on their website with a camera inside a pizza box to see what happens in extreme conditions.
They initially took nominations for what cities and roads needed their potholes filled. They got over 130,000 nominations in all 50 states. The campaign got a ton of national press and had over 30,000 organic mentions on social media in just the first week. The campaign was so successful, they extended it to have a stated goal of filling potholes in all 50 states. They filled hundreds of potholes and put up photos and info on their paving for pizza website. For the states where they didn’t hire someone to fill potholes, they gave $5,000 grants for road improvements.
User Tesla First Impression Autopilot Videos
Tesla is one of those companies that will probably never need to do much marketing. Their marketing is building innovative products. It’s their keynote presentations. Like him or not, it’s their eccentric CEO. When you have a company this disruptive, people will do the advertising for you. They’ve essentially taken the money that most companies would use for advertising and put it toward product development. Well, that and strapping a car to a rocket and launching it into orbit, which I’m sure cost more than I’ve ever spent on advertising budgets in my 16 years combined…so there’s that. However, because of their product innovations, they’ve been able to create a series of loyal, raving fans. This was especially apparent when Tesla launched their autopilot feature.
So, Tesla’s autopilot feature is so revolutionary that people upload videos of themselves experiencing the system. There are videos in heavy LA traffic, videos of people sleeping while the car is driving, and an empty car going through a drive thru. Some of these videos have over 12 million views. Here’s one, check it out.
The Subservient Chicken
Burger King again? Okay, maybe my perception is a little skewed from my formative first job, but in my opinion, no one does strange marketing tactics like Burger King. Originally launched in 2004, at the now-defunct subservientchicken.com, this was intended to reiterate their slogan of “Get chicken just the way you like it”. This one is…weird, but if you know anything about marketing, you know about the Subservient Chicken. Dreamed up by Burger King’s long-time partner in strangeness, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the Subservient Chicken was well…this online chicken. Okay, it really wasn’t a chicken. It was a guy in a chicken suit. And it wasn’t like it was a normal guy in a chicken suit. It was a guy in a chicken suit in a creepy dark apartment. On the website, you could type in what you’d like the “chicken” to do. He’d moonwalk, lay an egg, be an airplane, fight, watch TV, hide, breakdance, do the splits, pushups, cartwheels, headstands…300 commands in total.
The campaign was so successful that they brought it back 10 years later to launch another chicken sandwich.
The Blair Witch Project
Do you remember the Blair Witch Project? Do you remember your friends telling you that it might be “real” or a “true story”? I was in high school when this came out, which was the perfect demographic for falling for the brilliant marketing trap that this movie set. The Blair Witch Project was one of the first movies to use the internet and the marketing was intended to make people believe that it may be a true story or a found footage horror film. Their website had fake reports and sightings, as well as fake interviews. IMDB had the actors listed as “missing – presumed dead”. The mystery was so strong that the website had 20 million visitors (in 1999) before the film was even released.
Offline, instead of movie posters, the movie studio put up “Missing Persons” posters around college campuses. Creepy. Weird. And the movie? Meh. It was okay I guess. However, The Blair Witch Project will always be remembered for the weird marketing that only could have worked at the time.
Wrapping Up
I don’t know if guerrilla marketing campaigns have lost their charm, if companies see them as too gimmicky, or if I just don’t pay as much attention as I used to. However, great guerrilla marketing campaigns are fun. They’re interesting. They’re different. They get people talking. They’re based on doing something unexpected. Next time you are looking for a way to stand out from the crowd consider the element of surprise with some guerrilla marketing tactics.