The Economist Puts a Twist on Guerrilla Marketing

The Economist definitely understands the power of guerrilla marketing and promotions, and they're getting better and better at it as time goes on. Take a look at the latest promotion from their their "Get a world view" campaign. In order to illustrate the point that there are a confluence of different issues that come together to make up world news, The Economist created this custom Twister board and put it down in a busy train station. Posters on nearby walls depicted the Twister "spinner." Tons of people stopped to take a look at the guerrilla ad placement, and many thought it was an interesting and engaging way for the publication to get it's point across.

I'm definitely looking forward to more guerrilla marketing from The Economist! Let's see what else they've got in store...

Zoo Animal Cage Match: Guerrilla Meets Chicken

Today I was snapped out of my usual morning walk-to-work daze by an enormous inflatable chicken! Actually, it was a person in an inflatable chicken costume, gesticulating wildly and beckoning passersby to take flyers for the Texas Rotisserie & Grill from his assistants (yes, I decided that the large yellow chicken-man was clearly the leader of this operation).

People were definitely drawn to Senor Super Chicken, but I don't think they were all that impressed with his honchos. Not too many people were taking the menus. Maybe they should have also been passing out food samples or some cute chicken stress balls to leave more a good lasting impression.

The Economists Serves Up Promo Pie, Extra Guerrilla

The Economist is a weekly news publication that focuses on international news, politics, and business. For their latest marketing campaign, the magazine focused on a new tag line: "Get a world view." Targeting students at major college campuses in the Philadelphia area, The Economist decided to go guerrilla with the help of local pizza stores. Participating restaurants were stocked with Economist-branded pizza boxes. Each box reinforced the "Get a world view" marketing message by showing detailed pie charts that broke down different global statistics, such as "Arable and permanent crop land by country."

This unique guerrilla campaign did a great job of capturing the attention of college students, who frequently order pizza. The pizza boxes offered a direct message about the value of the Economist and the type of information included in the publication.

Don't Fall In!

Manhole Cover Campaigns


As more cities begin to decorate their manhole covers for beautification purposes, the use of manholes as vessels for guerrilla marketing campaigns has increased. Capitalizing on people’s tendency to keep their eyes directed toward the ground when they walk, manhole cover ads are guaranteed to catch people’s attention. Some manhole advertisements are relatively simple, like this one for AT&T, while others tend to be more elaborate. Manhole cover ads are a great way to convey a message quickly to a diverse audience. This kind of promotion might be even more effective if someone near by is handing out a product related to the message, good or service being advertised. AT&T for example might distribute miniature folding cell phone holders to ensure that people remember their ad long after they walk away.

AIM! GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!!!

Whether you call the game football or soccer, everyone knows how demanding and rigorous the sport is. In a country like Brazil, soccer is everything. So ESPN wanted to test soccer fanatics to see how nimble and skillful they really were with this guerilla marketing endeavor in the men’s lavatory. Such an engaging guerilla promotion was a great way for ESPN to connect with their target because they were communicating their message in a place that is often used by their primary target (of any age group).

I am wondering how long people actually stayed to try and score a goal?

Presidential Election Gone Guerilla!

Who is going to win this presidential election? Let’s ask 7-Eleven!

I was reading this blog about how 7-Eleven is using coffee to help their patrons voice their political opinion! During their “7-Election” campaign, 7-Eleven coffee drinkers are urged to choose the cup of the presidential candidate that they favor. Recent coffee polls show Obama is in the lead for sales! This guerilla campaign involving the promotional cups is a great way to drive traffic to the 7-Election website, the 7-Eleven stores, and ultimately to the actual election booths. This is definitely a political promotional item done right because it is creating buzz around the polls!

Random Fact: Did you know that 7-Election voters successfully predicted the previous two presidential elections! Scary but true!

I guess every vote really does count but in this case every brew counts in order to keep these patrons coming and interested!

Don't Be a Knave, Try Burma Shave!

This blog post is a tribute to Burma Shave, a family-run shaving cream company that engineered one of the first in-your-face guerrilla style advertising campaigns. Working with a very low budget when they began in the 1920s, the first signs were fairly small and consisted and white lettering and a red background.

Their standard format was 5 signs placed consecutively along a stretch of highway, obviously with enough space between each sign so that passersby could read each one. The soon began using a cutesy rhyming format, for example: Ben met Anna/ Made a hit/ Neglected beard/ Ben-Anna split/ Burma Shave.

Their ad campaign worked amazingly well! Soon they had spread their signs all over the major highways of America, and they were even offering 100 bucks a pop for good ideas submitted by their customers. Each sign had another limerick on the backside, so it was the kids job to look behind them from the back seat to see every phrase.

Revive the campaign! Or better yet, start your own! Get a few of your neighbors and put your clever message on some yard-signs. Then, as people drive down your street, they'll get a real kick out of it and actually pay attention. Want to endorse a political candidate, promote a local business, or just send an important message out to the community? Act now, don't be late, these sign ideas, just don't wait.

Guerrilla Toilet-vertising Not Getting Flushed Any Time Soon

If you had the ability to watch football anywhere you wanted to, where's the first location you'd take advantage of? The obvious answer to this question forms the focus of Telia's latest guerrilla toilet-vertising campaign, which is designed to engage viewers and show them that their new live broadcasting service can bring coverage of international soccer matches straight to their mobile phones. Why a toilet? Because Telia needed to hammer home the point that subscribers could watch games anywhere, literally!

The branded toilet seats were installed in pubs and restaurants in major cities to help get the buzz going. The top of the lids were even modified to match the seats at famous football stadiums across the world. An interesting, effective, and attention-grabbing guerilla campaign that's likey to recruit a lot of new subscribers for Telia's service.

Segway Promotions

Segway tours are increasing in popularity in many of America’s cities. Noticing an opportunity to promote their brand, companies such as Lipton have claimed empty space of segways as a new advertising frontier. Since these tours generally lead the segways and their riders through key areas of heavily populated cities, Segway marketing is a fantastic method of making sure your brand is seen by a large amount of people. Segways also tend to attract attention from others on the street due to their unique appearance. By adding a brightly colored design to the segway in the form of an ad, you can even greater increase your brand’s level of exposure. A company could also hand out promotional hats to Segway riders as a way for them to remember their experiences and a method of additional advertising.

So far, I’ve seen advertising on Segways appear in numerous United States cities including Chicago, Washington D.C., San Antonio and Austin as well as numerous cities in Europe. I’m surprised that Segway advertising isn’t used more in New York City but I expect to see more of it as the trend continues to grow.

Like Lambs to a Slaughter

A new guerrilla advertising craze is sweeping across the hills of the Netherlands. The hills, literally. Hotel.nl, a hotel reservation company, has bought sheep space on which to advertise, in the amount of 144 flocks.

They put waterproof blankets bearing their logo on each sheep, as pictured above. Thus, as the sheep go about their daily lives, passersby get a blue sea of advertising where there once were white-coated sheep.

Would animal rights organizations stand for this in America? Who knows, but it's not going to deter the dutch. What certainly won't be stopped in America is a much more commonplace practice that follows the same basic principal. Print your brand name on a bunch of clothing items people want to wear, and watch as they flock like sheep to grab them up (especially as it gets colder). Just don't make the clothes as drab as the sheeps' unforms, and maybe ask the people if they'd like a shirt rather than forcing garments upon them. That's a win-win marketing strategy.

Hot Air Balloon Show Is A Great Place for Guerrilla Marketing

A friend of mine recently went to the hot air balloon show in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was showing me some of her pictures and it made me think how great of an opportunity this event was for a guerrilla marketing campaign.


There were so many great balloons and it seems that companies like Pepsi and Honda had the right idea. Why not take advantage of a promotional opportunity like this? What better way to get your name noticed on something as large as a hot air balloon. Of course, if you aren't able to get your own full-size hot air balloon, you can always opt in for promotional balloons instead.

Fly Pizza Guerrilla Promo Gets High Marks

Here's a interesting (to say the least) guerrilla promotion from Fly Pizza. In order to increase awareness of the restaurant's night delivery service, Fly Pizza decided to target a very specific demographic: young smokers. Since Fly insists that young smokers often save money by rolling their own cigarettes (surreeeee they do), they decided to go with a very unique promotional product to spread the word. Fly Pizza created packages of cigarette rolling papers that advertised the shop's number alongside the slogan, "Delivery for Sudden Hunger Attacks."

The pizza shop reported that the campaign was a huge hit, and they experienced a noticeable increase in night delivery requests once they had given out a bunch of these promotions. Maybe next time they'll give out cigars and lighters as well! Cigarette papers are definitely a controversial guerrilla product to use, but I guess you can't really argue with results!

Absolut-ly Guerilla Marketing

Cocktail party on the roof anyone?

Absolut, a premium vodka brand, really knows how to capture their audience’s attention with their interesting advertisements. I particularly like how they incorporated guerilla marketing for this particular ad in order to capture the Absolut lifestyle of lounging and entertaining. Makes me want to host some sort of soiree tonight!

Marquee Room Popcorn Beer Promotion

Imagine you own a bar in the same building as a popular movie theater. Each week, moviegoers flock to films, but remain completely in the dark about your business - they don't even know you exist! How can you capture their attention and bring the crowd to your tables after the movies are over?

The Marquee Room found themselves in precisely this situation. Instead of opting for traditional advertising, they decided to directly engage moviegoers with a guerrilla promotion. The bar worked with their neighbors to create custom paper cups that popcorn would be sold in for the duration of the campaign. Each popcorn cup looked like a beer from the outside, with the popcorn forming the "head" for a unique eye-catching appearance. The Marquee Room also had the slogan "The bar in the theater" imprinted on the cup to complete this simple yet highly effective guerrilla campaign.

Oh Snap! Giant Promotional Popsicle Floods Times Square

In this ginormous guerrilla marketing stunt, Snapple tried to hoist the world's largest popsicle onto display in Times Square. It turns out the even the grandpappy of all frozen treats, weighing in at 17.5 tons, could not handle the heat. An 80 degree day in Manhattan caused the popsicle to melt and ooze out all over the streets. At least the tourists got an eyeful!

If you want to get your brand name out there, and wish to target consumers' sweet tooths in a more controlled manner than Snapple, why not try passing out some promotional candy items? These are far less likely to cover your target audience in a strawberry-kiwi flavored goo.

Stress Busting Guerrilla Promo

I've always thought that not enough companies were making use of stress balls, one of the most popular promotional items, in their guerrilla campaigns. You would think that creative marketers would have plenty of uses for this perennial favorite, but that hasn't necessarily been the case - until now.

This guerrilla promotion was coordinated by Parkcomodo, a "stress-free" automated parking solution. Basically, you steer your car into the Parkcomodo system and the machine parks it for you! Parking can be pretty stressful in crowded areas, so Parkcomodo may be on to something here.

For the campaign, the company hung 1,500 car-shaped stress balls on the side mirrors of vehicles in the neighborhood. The imprint on the stress-relievers read: "Parking stress? In September you can park comfortably." Simple and sweet. By actually stringing these cars up to the mirrors of their prospects, Parkcomodo discovered a way to get their audience engaged in a hands-on fashion - and that's a key ingredient for a successful guerrilla promo. Stress balls are nothing new, but like we've stressed (no pun intended) in the past, it's all about who can come up with the most novel and unqiue ways to use the traditional classics.

This Ad Campaign Is On A Roll!

It's not a bad idea to advertise on your car, in fact it's a great way to get your brand out there while parked or stuck in traffic. However, more and more people are catching on to this idea, and it's becoming annoying for consumers to see the same old ugly painted cars all the time.

This Sushi Car (pictured above) is a breath of fresh air, with a crisp and colorful design that cleverly employs the circular tire to mimic the shape of a sushi roll. The ad is designed so the viewer is initially intrigued by the tire design, and notices the small but prominent (bright orange) restaurant banner immediately thereafter.

So think up your own creative scheme to attract attention to your car, and then redirect the viewers' gazes to your promotional sticker, which you can place on your bumper or rear window. My only advice is to make the address or number to call slightly more visible on the ad!

Smoking Blindly

How many ways do people have to say not to smoke?

This trash can advertisement was created by Quit SA, a series of grassroots campaigns for quitting smoking and advocating health projects throughout Southern Australia. These types of guerilla promotions definitely capture your attention enough to read the message.

If increasing your risk for age-related macular degeneration and blindness is not a good enough reason to stop smoking then I don’t know what is!

Grazia Fashion Week Guerrilla Promo

To celebrate fashion week, Grazia Magazine decided to go guerrilla. Marketers packaged each copy of the magazine in a special "dry-cleaning" wrapping that made it look like freshly-pressed designer clothing. This eye-catching promotional packaging was well-received and a creative way to usher in one of the busiest events in the industry. The result was a memorable promotion that got subscribers excited about the latest issue of the publication.

Home Grown Guerrilla Promotion

The latest guerrilla promotion comes from the Gorge Grown Food Network, an organization that connects farms, co-ops, government agencies, and producer groups in the Columbia Gorge region. As part of a guerrilla promo campaign aimed to educate the community about the benefits of membership, Gorge Grown put these fun carrot sculptures at the base of trees in high-traffic areas. The guerrilla promotion creates the illusion that the trees are actually massive carrots sticking out of the ground! On each carrot is a small blue plaque which explains Gorge Grown's mission statement and gives prospective members some information about how to join. Definitely a clever guerrilla campaign!

Nick & Norah's Infinite . . . Wireless Promotion?

How about a free movie trailer with your wifi connection?

One of the most fun challenges in life is trying to find various unsecured wireless connections to use while out and about in the city. If the signal is unsecured and strong, you can bet I’m going to use it! While catching up on some work in a West Village café the other day, I opened my laptop and began the search for a free wireless signal. As I scanned my computer’s WiFi radar, I encountered an unusual guerrilla marketing scheme in the form of a strong WiFi signal called “Nick & Norah’s WiFi.” Curious, I connected to it and opened my web browser to discover that the only page I could view was a trailer for the new movie, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and a series of other links to promotional information about the film!

Apparently, the film’s advertisers have set up these wireless connections in various locales all over New York City. This campaign is an interesting way to ensure the trailer is seen by as many people as possible without the expense of showing it on a jumbotron in Times Square and many WiFi seekers like me are likely to access the connection and view the promotional materials even if they had no prior interest in the movie. Promoters might also considering distributing the trailer on USB memory sticks in video stores and other media centers as a similar method of promoting the film’s release.

I was impressed with the creativity and execution of this promotion and I’m interested to see whether the use of WiFi signals as marketing tools will become a trend in the near future. I’m imagining WiFi connections set up to promote the latest video game, TV shows, even perhaps as a way for political candidates to promote their campaigns. If the internet is America’s new super highway, are these promotional wireless connections the new billboards?

The Artistry of Packing Tape

Mark Jenkins is an infamous street artist known for his 3D packing tape sculptures. He self-promoted his art both nationally and internationally in a series of street installations. Instead of using awesome guerilla marketing/ street team products, he promoted his creative and eclectic art very effectively through grassroots endeavors in order to make his mark in the street art movement.

Balloon Guerrilla Promotion

Just when you think guerrilla marketers have done it all, they find a new use for an old promotional product and surprise you with a creative and attention-getting campaign! Case in point: check out this ambient ad put together by the makers of Luftal, an over the counter gas-relief medication. Patrons in bars and restaurants were given balloons which held a mystery object inside. Eager to find out what it was, people popped their balloons and discovered a trial size sample of Luftal. The popping balloons meshed excellently with the main benefit of the product: relief from gas!

What can we learn from Luftal's marketing campaign? First of all, guerrilla promotions are a great way to engage audiences, often in a hands-on manner than ensures they're getting the message. Secondly, you don't need a huge marketing budget to create a great guerrilla campaign. Promotional balloons are one of the most inexpensive items available, and there are plenty more affordable items that can be put to use for your company. And finally, creativity is the name of the game. Balloons may be a widely used promotional item, but if you can find a unique way to communicate your message with the help of balloons, it doesn't matter how many times people have seen them in the past.

A Promotional Kick in the Heine-ken

What's more fun than drinking an ice cold beer? Navigating it toward your parched lips via remote control! This Heineken ad (pictured above) uses ingenuity to combine a fun adult activity (drinking) with the warm nostalgia of childhood.

As you can see, the ad was featured on the side of a moving bus, which probably made it difficult to pass out promotional items. But maybe Heineken could further combine with the bus company to pass out cheap promos on the bus, such as keychain bottles openers (after all, Heineken is an imported brew, right?) or bottle insulators.

In addition to pleasing all of the bus riders and encouraging them to purchase the product, when excited passengers debark with gifts-in-hand, passersby will take a closer look at the bus and the ad displayed on it. This way, everyone wants to get involved, and the campaign really spreads the brand name.

Just a couple weeks ago, I passed by a Heineken stand next to Grand Central Station where promoters were giving away samples of their new light beer. How's that for an in-your-face promotional giveaway?! Turns out we Americans like all things beer... and all things free.

Carling iPint!

Guerrilla advertising has officially found its way onto the iPhone! Check out this creative iPhone application made by Carling. The application turns your iPhone into a digital pint of Carling beer which realistically empties out if you tip the iPhone! While the application doesn't actually do anything, it definitely does have a lot of people talking. This is the type of thing that people love to share and pass around, not because they are interested in spreading Carling's guerrilla brand-building campaign, but because it's unique and original. I'm sure Carling is pleased with the results either way. Take a look at the video to see for yourself.