The guerrilla revolution is on..
Anti-advertising groups have been established.. They do not just intend to warn of the marketing practices of the concerns but also act aggressively against it. They secretly stick or paint over advertising posters, launch hacker attacks or create anti-commercials. Many marketing experts are still taking a calm view on it. Are they really calm or do they just pretend to be? Could it be that they are in fact helpless how to thrill advertising tired consumers? Are concepts missing how to spread a message to the target group without causing they feel disturbed or blocking it? Within this emerging discussion a buzzword whose sound is already promising something unusual got around: Guerrilla Marketing.
“Guerrilla Marketing is the art of using unconventional or witty marketing to make customers paying attention who are sated with normal advertising. For that purpose it is necessary (but not absolutely) that guerrilla marketers act as far as possible beyond classical advertising channels and marketing theories.” (Breitenbach and Schulte, 2005)
The actual Guerrilla Marketing concept has already been developed in the middle 60’s in the USA. It was the time of change when markets were shifting from seller’s markets to buyer’s markets. In this connection marketing experts of American universities were looking for new strategies that did not exclusively base on market power, size and financial capacity. Instead of that they wanted to create strategies that were based on originality, unconventionalism and flexibility. Those features could especially been shown by the burgeoning small and medium-sized enterprises. Originally designed as a weapon for small enterprises against the goliaths of the branch nowadays even global players, e.g. Nike or BMW are using Guerrilla Marketing to highlight and make their brand getting under people’s skin.
