Countless factors work against guerrilla marketers looking to grab the attention of consumers today. The busy advertising landscape, preoccupation with personal media devices, and an overwhelming frustration with the sour state of the economy mean that marketers must respond with smarter, more winning concepts.
Last week Brandweek outlined some of the challenges and offered a look at successful international campaigns that overcame them in 2008. The defining quality of these success stories: "Guerrilla marketing has to be more than disruptive,” said Renegade Marketing C.E.O. Drew Neisser. “It has to be appealing enough that someone in a walking cocoon actually wants to stop and engage."
Among the selections for top-engagers were a subway station in Toronto that turned bench seating into a ski lift in the Alberta Rockies with the help of a wintry backdrop and carefully placed skis, a floating coffee bar and underwater billboard in the middle of an aquatic triathlete course in Hawaii, and an ongoing promotion to reignite interest in the Where’s Waldo? brand by sending a striped Waldo doppelganger to busy events like Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and the New York City ING Marathon.
