Guerrilla Marketing- Examples
Example- the Australian Navy
The Australian Navy made an example of this ship, which was used to carry asylum seekers. They blew up the ship and, in a form of bootsrap marketing, made this graphic image available. It was published around the world; it says in the loudest possible voice: "Not wanted here." Whether you agree with the message or not, it is aform of effective marketing of their message.
Example- Microsoft
Like him or not, Bill gates is an extra-ordinary marketer. Here he shows that a close tie in between RL (Real Life) and cyberspace is a key to getting your message across. Mr. Gates is using a countdown clock on a sign outside Micosoft's office to promote the launch of Windows XP in the third quarter of 2001. As if Micorsoft needed any free promotion but, well, here he is in every newspaper in America ... free of charge.
It isn't particularly original (there was the Doomsday Clock, the Fraser Institute's Debt Clock and many others) but it is effective.
Example- Momentous.ca Corporation
The momentous.ca/Northwood transaction closed on Friday August 31st, 2001, as planned. Momentous now owns a triple A 15,000 s.f. building in a top notch business park in Ottawa. They are currently scheduled to move in on September 14th. Opportunities abound for good PR- a) Do a media release on the purchase of the building. b) I have already suggested to the Owner that he include pictures of his team (all 50 plus of them) on all of his various web sites. People on the web like to see 'faces' and they like to see real estate; it gives them a warm feeling of security. Use some of the Momentous Mobiles- they have a bunch of SUVs covered with Momentous.ca logos. c) Work with the Owner on a new pylon sign for the building equipped with some type of dot ca real time or periodically updated web counter. The dot ca counter works like a Pavlovian lever- every time people drive by the Real Life (RL) sign, they read the dot ca counter and see how many Canadian domain names have been registered to that point and, guess what, they want one too or at least the dot ca TLD (Top Level Domain) becomes somewhat more hip and acceptable- there are 250,000 dot ca's and over 30,000,000 dot com's at this time so dot ca's have a ways to go. d) Launch a new 'Proudly Canadian' web logo (hyperlinked to momentous or internic or domainsatcost) for all 60,000 of their clients together with the dot ca domain name counter for crossover between RL and the web. Let all domain name holders tap into the dot ca web counter so that they too can post the ever changing number to their RL signs. e) Let their customers order lawn signs (which they pay for at the same time as they buy the domain name, web hosting, etc.) promoting their new domain name, their tel. number, etc. plus momentous (or internic or domainsatcost) and maybe CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority). The Owner can do a deal with ten sign companies in Canada and pretty much cover the country- all that internic or domainsactcost have to do is provide a web portal- the customer self designs his or her lawn sign(s), it gets automatically routed to the nearest sign shop; they pick it up or it gets priority posted to them for an extra charge and momentous gets 20% of the billing! Lawn signs cost $3.50 to $5 so momentous should get about 75¢ to $1 each plus a lot of free RL promotion! This is RL/web crossover at the bootstrap marketing level. It works really well! BMF
Example- Design Economics and Real Estate and Development Courses
Collect and web publish student testimonials.
Example: Entrepreneurialist Culture and Small Business Management
Produce a one page brochure to market the courses. Post it in the Engineering Faculty and in the Eric Sprott School of Business. Hand it out to students in other classes where they are likely to be recruits. Give the students who do enroll a simple assignment like doing the ECQ Test and sending in their results by email- uses the power of the web to collect their email addresses. (The University should have a simple utility so that stuents can go add their email addresses there and lecturers can then ping the data to send emails out to every student. It helps create a sense of community and truly reverses out the work to our clients (i.e., the students)). Collect and both web publish and brochure publish student testimonials.
Postscript: Copy of email to a friend who can solve this problem without waiting (forever) for the Uni to solve the problem:
David- the University should have a simple utility so that stuents can go there and add their email addresses to a list and lecturers can then ping the data to send emails out to every student. It helps create a sense of community and truly reverses out the work to our clients (i.e., the students)). Didn't you do something like this for the Dunrobin Lake Community Association? Isn't there a free net service that allows you to create new community groups and would it apply to a community of students? Can you tell me how to do it and I will create new communites for the courses I am involved with. Right now we do some simple stuff like have the students write down their email addresses on a piece of paper then we transcirbe them to our email programs with all the time and mistakes involved. Your help would be appreciated. Regards, Bruce
Example: Blue Heron Storage
Fred-- I have a suggestion for smart marketing of BHSC. Instead of sending out a mass email trying to sell people storage space, let's ask them to fill in our survey, something like this:
"Hi everyone-- this is a message from Fred Carmosino, Bruce Firestone, Verne Chant and Barry Lett. We just launched our mini storage business in Kanata and we were wondering if you could take five minutes to go to: http://www.blueheronstorage.com/Survey2.htm and fill in our survey. It will help us figure out what our area needs in the way of extra storage space for homes and businesses. Thanks, Fred"
BMF
Example: PRNs for the Sens
Support for a team that did not exist-- 15,000 PRNs at $25 each entitling the holder to priority seat selection for seasons tickets are sold before the award of franchise in December 1990. Also 500 Associate Sponsorships at $500 each and 31 Original Corporate Sponsors at $15,000 each are also sold.
Copyright. Dr. Bruce M. Firestone. Ottawa, Canada. 2001.