Last Updated on Mar 11, 2020 by James W
In the age of the Internet, companies have to use their guerrilla marketing skills rather than million dollar budgets. People were no longer into the mass marketing campaigns of the 1980s and the 1990s – there were niche audiences that needed to find things that spoke to them.
Comedic marketing was incredibly successful as most people had successfully been able to turn off their response mechanism to hard sells. The guerrilla marketing campaigns that won over the public in 2013 all had something special about them. Here are some of the best guerrilla marketing campaigns of 2013.
1 – Human Lab Rats
Involving the audience is a great way to market without spending a great deal of money. Fantastic Delights decided to test the consumer response to its new product by seeing who would subject themselves to a test in order to get a prize from the company. The catch was that you had to dress up in a rat costume and run in a human size hamster wheel in front of the public.
2 – The ATM Machine
Coke created a joke ATM which dispensed too much money to the user. The catch was that the user was informed that he or she had to share the money with someone. There were dozens of hilarious videos generated, some of which were placed online and shared for millions of views around the Internet via comedy sites.
3 – The Floating Vending Machine
To promote its new campaign, Lipton Tea developed a vending machine that actually floats. The campaign was marketed through Facebook and showcased a Lipton machine getting lost at sea after its distribution ship got struck in the ocean. People who wanted to try the new tea actually had to swim out in the ocean in order to access the floating vending machine, and plenty of people did so. The person who found the floating vending machine first obtained a prize, which also created a great deal of hype. Hundreds of people ending up trying to find the machine. The videos were placed online and received millions of views.
4 – United Arrow
A retail store hooked up their mannequins with Microsoft Kinect to make them move. This means that the mannequins would mimic the movements of people who walked by. The result was that a crowd of people was attracted to the store for the entirety of the campaign, which was captured and put online. Many of them spent hours in front of the store, attracting real customers because of the spectacle.
5 – Gangham Style
M&Ms Piggybacking off of the success of one of the most watched Youtube videos ever, Psy’s Gangham Style, the Mars Corporation had five people run around the streets in large M&M costumes and perform the dance with random people on the street. The results of the campaign were put up on Youtube as well. Because it was done in the middle of the hype for Psy’s video, the M&M video received millions of hits as well.
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