Viral and Guerrilla Advertising

May 3, 2012

Viral Adversising

• uses pre-existing social networks to increase brand awareness as well as achieving other marketing objectives such as product sales
• can range from things such as word of mouth, video clips, interactive flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or text messages
• tries to reach as many people as possible 
• Old Spice used viral marketing techniques through commercials like this one. The "Old Spice guy" seen in this commercial became a very notable figure because of the abundance of the commercials that were on the air. This sparked their idea for the summer of 2010 to run a three day campaign where this man, Isaiah Mustafa, replied to almost 200 questions or comments posted to various different social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, and Youtube). He was sitting in a bathroom set in Portland that the crew created and ended up with the fastest growing viral campaign to date. The had 6.7 million views after 24 hours, and after 36 hours this number sky rocketed to 23 million views

 Guerrilla Advertising

• low cost advertising strategy that utilizes different and unconventional ways of getting a message across
• some examples of this are graffiti, flash mobs, and sticker bombing
• this website shows about thirty example of what guerrilla advertising is all about. They are all clever ways to get a point across that, without looking very hard, would be difficult to pick out as marketing techniques. I have always recognized this form of advertising as my favorite because it takes so much thought to make them work well and they are all so creative that it is hard not to appreciate what the marketers are doing.