You can create a marketing buzz on a small budget, writes Ed Charles
IT’S the classic business dilemma. You’re launching into a crowded market and the main competition has a marketing budget of tens of millions of dollars, whereas you have a few thousand.
You can’t compete head-on. The only option is to use your wits and creativity to create a marketing buzz out of nothing.
Welcome to the world of guerilla marketing.
The term was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in the book of the same name, which has sold more than 25 million copies since 1982. It is defined as an unconventional way of promoting a company, usually a small one, on a low budget.
It was the technique entrepreneur Michael Schreiber reached for when he founded Strike Bowling in Melbourne’s Chapel Street in 2001. An enthusiastic guerilla marketer, he says: “I think it gives you some cut-through with smaller budgets to speak to our audience, who are not necessarily consumers of mainstream media.
“Part of our success has been getting our message on the street.” This includes distributing leaflets, a bowling-pin mascot and aquirky Segway scooter.
Last August, he reached for the same marketing techniques to launch in the crowded entertainment precinct of Surfers Paradise. In addition to leaflets, a customised and branded Ford LTD with the top lopped off drove around “with a couple of good-looking people” in it. On the beach, people were given branded frisbees, which helped get the Strike brand on the consumers’ radar.
“It’s creating the impulse and presence, especially local presence, because our market is going to come from close to where we are,” Schreiber says
The story is similar for the Sumo Salad chain. On the day the first store opened at Liverpool Street in Sydney’s CBD, only 30 people bought salads, compared with the 200 sales needed to break even. It was not until a friend took to the street in a sumo suit that the chain started on its growth curve to the 25 stores that it now owns and franchises.
Co-founder Luke Baylis says: “We’ve always done different things. We used extremely cheap tactics when we were starting off, with stickers and chalk-writing and different, ambient types of guerilla marketing. And now we are able to go into television, viral marketing via word-of-mouth, email and so on, and radio, all of which are a bit more expensive.”
When Sumo opened in Melbourne, it ambushed Krispy Kreme, which Baylis says is itself a guerilla marketer but with a much larger budget. He rounded up friends, fans and franchisees to picket the Krispy Kreme opening at Fountaingate last July, with placards such as: “Don’t get fatter, give up the batter.”.
“It’s funny”, he says. “They would have spent several hundred thousand dollars on the launch of their new Victorian store. Every time they were mentioned, it was in association with Sumo. For a campaign that cost us $8000, we got about $235,000 worth of media.”
Last year, the chain was large enough to spend $250,000 on marketing and $50,000 on a guerilla advertisement lampooning the McDonald’s Feed Your Inner Child campaign. In the Sumo version, a door opens on the human body, but the child is too fat to climb out. The tagline of the ad, which was spread virally on the YouTube video-sharing site and the MySpace social network, was: “Eat large, stay thin.”
Baylis says: “We had in excess of 150,000 hits across the various websites and it is still going.”
At the Pubboy pub chain, marketing is driven by founder Mark Alexander-Erber, who says: “What I like to do is create a buzz.
“By creating a buzz and getting into people’s faces, you get noticed. To me, branding and guerilla marketing are all about getting the word out there and people talking about the name.”
He brands almost every item in the pub and turns a blind eye to theft. “I have everything stolen, ashtrays, T-shirts and glasses. It is expensive, but it works.”
One of his early stunts was to offer a free drink to anybody who brought in an ad for a rival pub ripped from Yellow Pages. “Within a week, there wasn’t one Yellow Pages ad from my competition in town.”
The 18 to 35-year-old market is a prime target for guerilla marketing because it is difficult to reach with traditional media such as television and print.
One of the main techniques for targeting the 18-35 market is to take the message to the streets and events. Tactics can be as simple as leafleting, sampling and branded vehicles through to theatrical events. The Pubboy chain’s latest gimmick is a giant branded inflatable beer bottle. print.
The internet is prime delivery medium for guerilla marketing through blogs and the new generation of social networking sites. Companies such as Sumo Salads send out viral ads on the internet. But it doesn’t have to be expensive — Sumo’s first (pre-YouTube) viral ad was a low-cost home video which that was projected at train stations. print.
Guerilla marketing is ideal for local businesses because of the street activity and events. Ice cream chain Trampoline used fly posters and balloons on the street to announce its arrival to locals in St Kilda, Melbourne. print.
Sometimes guerilla stunts can go wrong — as they did for Turner Broadcasting in a campaign for the TV show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Branded magnetic lights that were left in public places but because they contained circuit boards, were thought to be terrorist devices by police bomb units.