Throwback Guerrilla

Via Conseils Marketing

This campaign isn't new, but I think it's such a great example of socially conscious guerrilla. The promotional condom is attention grabbing because at first glance, reading "condoms can cause wrinkles" seems negative, but as you consider the other parts of the campaign it becomes clear that these people credit their old age to them. These senior citizens gathered in a busy square, donning promotional T-shirts and holding signs, while handing out condoms and talking candidly about safe sex with a young adult audience, in order to help prevent new cases of HIV.

Pritt Correction Tape

Via Ads of the World

I've seen guerrilla executions similar to this before, but I don't think it was for this kind of product. Pritt correction tape (which is similar to white out)placed these promotional stickers on the handrails of escalators in a busy malls in Honduras in order to communicate that their tape is more durable. Although it's been done before, it probably is more effective for office supplies to be advertised this way than through something more traditional, like a print ad.

Getting Dressed on the Run

Via Ads of the World

This is an interesting guerrilla attempt by a German lingerie store. They created a billboard with their custom apparel to promote their summer sale. As people passed by, they took articles of clothing-- this was intentional, although I'm not sure why. As you can see, at the end of the hour the only thing that was left was the promotional socks! You can try looking for the viral video of the billboard online.

Scratch Your BMW and Win!

Via Ads of the World

These promotional cards from BMW are pretty inventive, and encourage you to do something many a BMW would never dream of-- scratching their car. The "paint" on the car is this silvery stuff that you scratch off on lottery tickets; when you scratch it off on this card it tells you to turn the card over-- where it informs you that you're covered. BMW owners are that crazy obsessive type that probably have pictures of their cars in photo frames on their mantle, so it's a great comfort to know that if the worst does befall their precious cars, BMW will fix it.

Socially Responsible Guerrilla

Via Ads of the World

In Calcutta, children street vendors are lured into prostitution daily, but the majority of citizens feel that this doesn't happen where they live. In order to raise public awareness about the problem, Krishnayam, a NGO, staged serveral "illicit interactions" between older men and young girls (all paid actors) in several busy parts of the city. At the sight of this, bystanders became enraged and the message, "Stop child prostitution-- Call 1098" was revealed by the actors.

Soon after, a 360 degree campaign followed that included a website, numerous promotional signs and banners throughout the city, as well as promotional toys, like dolls, in order to grab people's attention and remind citizens that child prostitution does happen in their city. The whole campaign was well-received and garnered a lot of media attention, as well as support from concerned citizens. Calls to the helpline increased 47% during the following months.

Stress Cars?

Via Conseils Marketing

An Italian firm called Parkcomodo placed these car-shaped stress balls to raise awareness about the opening of their Parkcomodo automatic parking system. The balls say "Parking stress? In September you can park comfortably." I never realized that parking was such a stressful event, but then again I don't live in Italy. I wonder if they kept up this promotional campaign with other stress relieving products, such as incense-- people could hang it from their rearview mirrors so their cars smell nice, and they would constantly be reminded of the Parkcomodo brand.

A Sticky Sticker

Via Ads of the World

This outdoor banner ad for Orbit's new fruity, liquid-filled gum makes use of a promotional sticker to really communicate how juicy it is. Maybe I'm a little jaded, but it just doesn't seem that extraordinary or eye-catching to me. I feel like they would have been better off distributing promotional gum and then doing some kind of event around that.

Bounty Makes a Mess

Via I Believe in Advertising

Bounty created quite a scene in New York and Los Angeles in order to promote their paper towels. In New York, they spilled a six-foot tall coffee cup outside of Penn Station, a huge commuter hub, and in Los Angeles they dropped an oversized popsicle on a busy promenade. They had representatives present at both locations to allow those who passed by to sample their towels. Near each oversized mess there were banners shaped like paper towel rolls that said, "Makes small work of BIG spills."

Here Comes the Sun!

Via I Believe in Advertising

This is one promotional card that is near and dear to my heart. As a way to promote sunscreen, these ads change color (and get darker) in the sun. Of course if the card was a reflection of my life the people would turn red in about thirty seconds, but I digress. The visual is probably pretty effective at making people believe they'll get tan instead of burned and use the product. If this company makes aloe, I'd like to see a sister ad like this one for poor schmoes like me who get burned no matter what.

World Wildlife Fund

Via Conseils Marketing

The World Wildlife Fund placed these light switch plates in hotel rooms in order to encourage energy conservation. This is a pretty good use of an ordinary light switch plate, so hopefully it caused some people to conserve electricity in the hotel. Previously the WWF has attached a large balloon to the exhaust pipe of a car to demonstrate how much pollution is caused by a day of driving, and turned a towel dispenser in a restroom into the shape of a continent so that you could visualize how many trees were wasted by using paper towels. Overall, the WWF has produced some great guerrilla promotions that have creatively garnered attention-- and hopefully have been successful at changing peoples' behaviors.

Amnesty International

Via I Believe in Advertising

Amnesty International in Portugal put these promotional stickers that kind of look like bookmarks on doors (or anything with cracks through which sound can escape) in order to raise awareness about domestic violence and to encourage those who hear the screams and cries to report it. Hopefully this grabbed enough peoples' attention because domestic violence is something that should never be taken lightly-- reporting the sounds of domestic violence can save someone's life.

Social Guerrilla

Via Ads of the World

These promotional signs were placed around the Netherlands by UNHCR to encourage donations to help refugees enter the country. Placing the sign behind a fence like that creates a really powerful image that will hopefully compel people to donate. Although the discussion on Ads of the World focused on how this is not an original execution, I think this campaign will be more effective than if they had just placed promotional stickers somewhere or given out informational flyers.

Gross Guerrilla

Via Ads of the World

If I had actually seen this in a magazine I probably would have screamed and then run around the room crying, but at least you know that the campaign is working at catching people off guard. These promotional bookmarks for Terminex were placed in the cracks of magazines to remind people that roaches can invade your house from the tiniest cracks. The placement is extremely well done with the message, but I am getting freaked out just looking at the picture. It's so realistic looking! I'm going to need to wind down in a room with scented candles and incense now just to get this image out of my mind...

Tissue Jam

Via I Believe in Advertising

I thought this was a really inventive little guerrilla campaign for a copy machine company-- in order to communicate that Double A copiers prevent paper jams, the company distributed promotional tissue boxes to offices that were made to resemble copy machines (with the jammed paper coming out of the top). There was a custom sticker at the top of the box that encouraged people to switch to Double A copiers to avoid jams. This was a pretty good idea because everyone keeps tissues in their office, and the design ties in nicely with their product-- but it probably would have been better if they could have somehow incorporated something that doesn't get thrown away, like a desk organizer or something.

Dirty Water

Via Ads of the World

This is a great campaign for a great cause-- earlier this year, UNICEF placed a fake vending machine in New York City to raise awareness about the millions of children who die each year from a lack of clean water. The vending machine "sold" water bottles filled with dirty water in a variety of "flavors", such as malaria, typhus, dengue, etc. The machine was decorated with promotional stickers, citing facts about water borne illnesses and how they affect children. Donations could be made on-site (through the vending machine), by texting or online, and the campaign garnered tons of media attention and about 7,500 pedestrian impressions. All in all, it was a well-executed and successful campaign for an extremely important social cause.

A Coliseum of Beer

Via Ads of the World

Here's another great example of low cost guerrilla that created a big impact. To highlight their sponsorship of the UEFA Champions League final, Heineken created a replica of the Roman Coliseum entirely out of promotional cans. Obviously it attracted a lot of attention, because you can see in the images above people stopping to take pictures of it with their cameras. Clearly, really simple promotions can have a huge impact!

Entertainment in the Bathroom

In France, promotional stickers and mirrors were utilized in the bathrooms of movie theatres to promote a new detective drama. Talk about a night of entertainment! It's definitely a more effective promotion for the show than just having a preview before the movie or putting up a promotional poster in the theater, like we do in the United States.

True Guerrilla

Via Ads of the World

The campaign featured above by the Salvation Army is the true definition of guerrilla marketing-- low cost with a high impact. Volunteers went around to leave messages on dirty windsheilds, store windows, coffee cups, banners-- you get the idea-- to get the message out that the Salvation Army collects donations year round, and 100% of those donations goes to helping the needy, and not to advertising budgets.

Ikea Makes a Train a Home

Via Ads of the World

Ikea is constantly making over outdoor areas to promote their stores, and I love it. The images above are from Japan-- to promote the first store opening in a specific region, Ikea made over the inside and outside of a train in Kansai. They put up promotional stickers and covered the cars with Ikea fabric and couch cushions. It got tons of media attention, and once the store finally opened it reported record sales of all Ikeas worldwide. All in all, a little bit of effort produced big results for Ikea.

Ecological Business Card

Via Ads of the World

This eco-friendly promotional stamp is such a fitting idea for an environmental company. Of course, you run into some problems because I for one would not want to carry around a yougurt lid in my pocket, and the stamp is probably too big to carry around, but the idea is in the right place. You may as well give something that people will want to use and carry around then, such as a promotional pen.

Corporate Rodeo

Via I Believe in Advertising

I've seen rodeo bulls before, but never a rodeo chair! I can definitely believe that this promotional chair garnered a lot of attention at a circuit of business fairs in Germany. I know the Economist did something similar to promote their magazine, but they actually used a mechanical bull-- this ties in a little better to the business world and the idea of "Staying on top". Considering most magazine promotions are simply T-shirt giveaways or promotional pens, this was definitely a unique way for WirtschaftsWoche to stand out.

A Strong Promotion

Via Ads of the World

This campaign out of Australia for Iams dog food was voted best DM from May on Ads of the World, and I'd have to agree! Saatchi & Saatchi distributed these custom imprinted frisbees that look like 10 kg weights at dog parks to highlight the health benefits Iams provides dogs. If I were a dog owner and my dog came running up to me with one of them in his mouth, I'd probably be convinced to at least try the product. I think it's more effective because it's a promotional pet product and something my dog can interact with-- if they had just handed me a promotional key chain or something like that, I wouldn't feel compelled at all to buy Iams for my dog.

Keeping It Clean

Via Ads of the World

This guerrilla campaign really provides everything necessary to follow through with the behavior it's promoting. In Vietnam these promotional posters made out of soap paper were placed in public places in order to encourage people to wash their hands regularly after using the bathroom. Part of the poster can be ripped off for people to use at that exact moment to wash their hands! Providing the target with soap at the exact moment they see the poster is really the best way to change their behavior, and it was probably really easy to measure the success of the campaign. I wonder if there were other posters made out of promotional towels in order for them to dry their hands!