CHALLENGE: Encourage the PR industry to learn and profit from the tactics practiced by guerrilla marketing agencies.
In terms of learning, it may depend solely on the individual considering the challenge. For some PR professionals, guerrilla marketing is all about lowbrow, low-budget stunts
- almost a burlesque of what the industry is supposed to be. For others, there is the possibility of approaching the subject with an open mind, particularly in regard to breaking
through the communications clutter to reach an audience and generate significant media impressions - and, in the process, build up sales and sales leads.
The guerrilla approach often requires a different modus operandi than many PR professional are used to. For starters, most guerrilla campaigns do not tend to be expensive.
But there is a difference between cost-effective and cost-restrictive, and in this case the decrease in funds is counterbalanced with a push to increase the imaginative planning.
(And as many PR professionals will attest, one of the first things to get junked in a corporate downsizing is the PR operation - so being able to prove sterling results without
overspending the budget is a great way to prove one's effectiveness and importance.)
"Guerrilla marketing means working with a limited or non-existent budget," says Greg Hoffman, e-commerce marketing manager at Thompson Group in Tampa, FL, and
author/editor of the blog Marketing Gorilla (http://gregwhoffman.blogspot.com). "Charge the clients for standard services, then close your eyes and imagine your budget dried up,
but you still have to deliver positive results. It's a scary thought, but it really makes you think."
But Hoffman quickly adds that colorful ideas are only a fraction of this approach. "Guerrilla marketing isn't just innovative thinking," he explains. "It has to include long-
term strategic planning. PR people need to look deeper into how their work affects or could affect overall marketing initiatives, such as organic keyword searches and reciprocal
links. It's not just about getting good press these days. It's about driving quality traffic to the client's sites. Their strategy needs to include business blogs, free press
release distribution sites, blog-tracking sites and pitching to other business blogs, small and large."
Going beyond the traditional press release and a follow-up call, a guerrilla attitude can often provide extra fuel for the PR campaign's velocity. "In a nutshell, we believe
ideas are media," says Darren Paul, managing partner with the award-winning Night Agency LLC in New York. Paul, whose client roster includes Fortune 1000 corporations and
high-level nonprofits, believes guerrilla tactics are not antithetical to traditional PR practices. "Substantive guerrilla marketing programs can be properly integrated into PR
and media opportunities that can create multi-millions of impressions based on a very simple idea," he says.
New Idea, New Clients
More often than not, the guerrilla approach does not require a substantial realignment of corporate philosophy. It could actually be just a mere tweak of PR protocol to fit
the evolving nature of media distribution.
For example, in July 2004 the Night Agency created a somewhat outrageous guerrilla tactic that involved the use of ladies' underwear for billboard advertising. Paul could've
gone the usual route of creating a VNR and sending it out across the country. Instead, he edited a 30-second video clip which was posted on a specially designed Web site that was
promoted on behalf of the agency by independent New York PR rep Alyssa Siegel. The result was not only significantly less expensive than the old-fashioned VNR strategy, but the
feedback literally never ceased and helped to build the agency's visibility (and, ultimately, its client roster).
"It was unintentionally viral - we still get thousands of hits per day to this Web site, a year-and-a-half later" says Paul, noting he just came from a phone interview with the
editor of the Australian edition of FHM Magazine. "I was going to say this wasn't something for the New York Times, but it went in the New York Times. And
on CNN, BBC World - hits way, way, way above it should've gotten. We had a million hits the month it was launched."
One Size Not Fitting All
But not everyone believes guerrilla marketing is an open university for grabbing ideas.
"I think guerrilla marketers have more to learn from their PR brethren rather than the other way around," says Nate Towne, president of Xanadu Communications, a PR
agency based in Portland, ME. "Guerrilla strategies such as product placement and third-party celebrity endorsements are actually rooted in PR."
Towne theorizes the effective transparency of a successful PR effort is rarely duplicated with the brash in-your-face approach favored in some guerrilla endeavors. "What we
can learn from PR is to stay under the radar," he says. "We've seen some guerrilla PR efforts backfire for being recognized as PR. For example, a number of companies were
discovered paying bloggers to promote their messages. Once consumers learned that bloggers were being paid, the brand value went into a nosedive."
Creativity can also backfire when proper planning and research are absent. Paul points to the now-infamous 2001 brouhaha resulting when IBM's guerrilla campaign of
spray-painting messages on the streets of San Francisco ran afoul with the municipal graffiti ordinances. IBM received plenty of PR, he notes, albeit for the wrong reason.
"Don't do anything unlawful that you will be crushed by the press and local city governance," he adds. "Don't do something for the sake of getting press. It needs to make
sense on the street level to the consumer that sees it that day."
On The Target
Getting the right consumer to connect with the campaign is the ultimate goal of any communications project, whether it involves PR or guerrilla marketing or both.
Admittedly, not every demographic is receptive to this type of communication. John Kerrigan, president of The Wilker Group in Austin, TX, notes the millennials (defined
as tweens and early teens), Generation X and Generation Y as being the perfect audience. "Growing up in the Nintendo age, they are used to fast information and they are
desensitized to the typical broadcast campaigns and print media," he says. "They are more adept at being reached with guerrilla marketing - you get to speak with them at their
level."
Campaigns aimed at a specific community could also welcome guerrilla-style tactics. Kathy Daneman, publicity director for the New York publishing company Soho Press,
takes an online guerrilla-style approach in promoting new books that would appeal to specific demographics.
"We reach out to niche groups as many ways as possible," explains Daneman. "We have an upcoming Korean-themed book release called 'The Queen of Tears' by Chris McKinney.
That's coming in April 2006. To promote it, we'll be sending out electronic HTML postcards to Korean-American student organizations and the Korean-American Librarian and
Information Professionals Association. We want to reach audiences in as many places as possible."
The face-to-face nature of guerrilla campaigns can also prove beneficial when dealing with damage control issues. Kerrigan notes how Coors Brewing Company, which was
stung by widely publicized perception of corporate homophobia (some gay bars refused to stock the company's brands), embarked on a guerrilla-style outreach to bars and clubs with
a predominantly gay and lesbian clientele to show it did not endorse any degree of intolerance.
"They are now actively pursuing that market to fix the old adage that Coors is anti-gay," says Kerrigan, noting the company scored significant PR points - and improved the
depth and scope of its beer sales in the process, too.
Contacts: Darren Paul, 212.431.1945, [email protected]; Greg Hoffman, 813.884.6344, [email protected]; John Kerrigan, 512.970.9216, [email protected]; Nate Towne, 207.793.2600, [email protected]; Kathy Daneman, 917.816.0781, [email protected].