Crossmedia Guerrilla Attack

The guerrilla attack is the heart of guerrilla marketing. Since the word “Guerrilla” has a military background, also the accompanying terms like “Attack” originally refer to warfare.

On one hand, the attack describes the time when the designed guerrilla campaign is put into actions. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of guerrilla marketing, a guerrilla attack “is never-ending. It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause in it. But you never stop it completely. (…) You spend a relatively brief time developing the attack and inaugurating it, but you spend the life of your business maintaining, monitoring and improving your attack.” ¹⁾ A guerrilla attack is characterized by a “strong tie” with the company’s target group as well as by an aggressive force.

On the other hand, the term of guerrilla attack is also used when talking about strategies against competitors. “Marketing Management” author Philip Kotler defines it as a set of small, recurrent attacks on different business areas of the competitor (whom he calls “opponent” ²⁾) in order to discourage him and establish oneself there in time. This attack strategy is most suitable for smaller, under-capitalized companies.

Ultimately, both definitions of the guerrilla attack have the same final purpose: to contribute to the campaigning company’s business success.

A crossmedia guerrilla attack – to come back to the title of this article - connects its actions across the different media: online, mobile, print, tv, radio and even the customers themselves. Thanks to a multiplier effect, the impact of single actions can be increased significantly. Therefore, a well-coordinated interaction of all the campaign’s actions is a must. ³⁾

Crossmedia guerrilla attacks are not only used because of their cost efficiency, but also to meet the distinctive media preferences of the different target groups. From different sources, the customers are channelled to a funnel, i.e. a central accumulation point, usually the company’s webpage.⁴⁾

A mobile phone online shop, MFC 24, once sponsored several events of a local radio channel whose listeners were their target customers. Through the moderators’ announcements and promoters distributing flyers amongst the audience, the people were made aware that the sponsoring company MFC 24 provided shopping vouchers for its online shop and a “surprise” via bluetooth beamer next to the stage. After enabling the download onto their mobile phones, the people received their vouchers and a “surprise” app pretending to delete all contacts on the phone all of a sudden because of a “system failure”. After a shock moment, the phone’s display would light up again saying “Mobile phone broken? Outstanding offers online on mfc24.de”. The people’s incentive to share this app via MMS and thus multiply the awareness effect was the shock which they could pass on to their friends. The campaign’s results were obvious within the next months on the company’s increased number of webpage clicks and up-going sales.

In 2004, the airline Condor wanted to re-position itself as a low-cost carrier. Next to the classical crossmedia ad campaign with the “famous” flies, the company chose the city of Cologne on the occasion of a leading travel fair to support its ads with guerrilla attacks: Within one night, the fair grounds and entrances as well as the main shopping and tourism areas of Cologne have been sprayed with easy-to-remove colours – displaying e.g. gigantic Yeti foots and including a catchy phrase combined with Condor’s offer and their URL. Next to the awareness, the guerrilla attack got from the people (due to the fair mainly consisting of the target group), it also caused many reports in the media. Condor even reserved some parts of the campaign’s budget for potential fines and removal costs, but luckily did not need to use the money.