Oxfam Novib: dinner at the park

A previous post on this blog showed that a guerrilla action can be a very powerful tool to boost your business if entrepreneurs at least pay attention to the 5 (or sometimes more) guerrilla marketing principles. Compared to profit businesses, many non-profit professionals are still somehow reluctant to introduce either traditional or guerrilla marketing concepts in their actual communications. However, over the past five years, more and more nonprofits tend to a more professional marketing approach (Dolnicar & Lazarevski, 2009). 

Possibly higher benefits for non-profit organisations

According to Levinson, Adkins and Forbes (2010), guerrilla marketing or street marketing should become one of the main activities of non-profit organisations because they usually need to create awareness with a very small budget. Charities that already use street marketing can draw easily attention on their campaigns. This medium is perfect for NGO's because it requires only a low budget and it enhances creativity among volunteers. In addition, consumers tend to accept more this way of communication compared to similar guerrilla actions in a profit sector. Non-profits, after all, aren't really seen as organisations that just "sell" things. 

Guerrilla Marketing of Oxfam Novib: Dinner at the park

Oxfam Novib is a good example of a non-profit organisation which has made use of guerrilla tactics to create awareness of its new campaign. Last week, Oxfam Novib started a campaign "support doing it yourself" in the Netherlands. The campaign basically wants people to be more aware of the fact that people in third world countries are facing many difficulties to get a plate of food. To promote this campaign Oxfam surprised random people at the Amsterdam Vondelpark with a fancy dinner. Before people could finish their instant made dinner, everything was removed as fast as it came. Because of this, people who initially were enjoying the whole performance, got surprised and some of them were even upset. That was the moment when a waiter presented a final plate with the message "a plate of food is not everywhere to be taken for granted, support doing it yourself". 

About Oxfam Novib

Oxfam Novib is a world-wide development organisation that mobilizes the power of people against poverty. Around the globe, the organisation works to find practical, innovative ways for people to lift themselves out of poverty and thrive. Oxfam Novib is one of 17 affiliates of the Oxfam confederation, who together work with local partners in 94 countries. Oxfam Novib has the lead role in Oxfam’s work in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Egypt, Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya), Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories/Israel, Somalia, Uganda and Vietnam. The organisation is also present on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Flickr

How to measure the success of a guerrilla campaign?

Creating a good and solid guerrilla action is one thing, but measuring its success in order to know whether the action is profitable, is another thing. Any successful marketer or entrepreneur should have a dashboard which shows measures of guerrilla marketing success. Businesses should take into account response rates, conversion rates, referrals or recommendations, retention rates and many more. However, I will come back on those in a later blog post that will be dedicated to digital tools marketers can use to evaluate marketing campaigns. 

In this post I would like to focus on more useful guerrilla marketing metrics. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, guerrilla marketing is based on five principles. As young entrepreneur, you might not immediately want to start using expensive and complicated online tools. Moreover, without these tools, you still can get a lot of information by consulting the available data correctly. First of all, never forget the five basic characteristics of your guerrilla campaign. You always have to check out whether your actions are unexpected, unconventional, remarkable, original and unforgettable. Second, it also might be interesting to find out how many times your advertising or video has been viewed or shared on the internet. Third, for your own interest, try to keep an eye on the budget you spend on the campaign.

To make things even more clear, I have created a template which is applicable in every single situation in order to have a quick overview of the guerrilla campaign. I highly recommend to do the same thing prior to the launching of your campaign to prevent any substantive errors. Once the have a positive outcome, campaign success will be more likely. The bar chart underneath is a possible template guerrilla marketers can use.

template bar chart guerrilla marketing campaign

Interpretation of the bar chart

Cheap

Guerrilla marketing was initially all about trying to reach the same audience using a small or even no budget.That is why this kind of marketing is sometimes called "no budget marketing". It is always a hard job to figure out the exact amount of money you will spend on an average guerrilla communication campaign, but in this case we will only have a more detailed look at the on site costs. The on site budget includes all expenses related to the campaign that are not related to (1) the sophisticated online tools for measuring and tracking conversation rates, share rates or (2) the amount of time spent by online conversation managers in order to enhance the buzz. In this case we just roughly want to know how much it costs to create billboards, special campaign equipment, etc. In one of my next post I will give a more detailed explanation about the off site costs.

Unexpected

Figuring out a rather subjective characteristic like expectations is not an easy task. However, it does not ask that much effort to run a pretest of your developed guerrilla actions. You can already get useful information just by asking some people outside your business their meaning. In addition, guerrilla campaigns are mostly cheap and do not require much effort in order to adapt them. Because of this reason, you can run a pretest and if necessary adjust your message. Eventually, every human being should not have many difficulties when it comes to distinguish expected from unexpected events.

Original and unconventional

Let us put those two together because originality is a direct result of unconventionality and vice versa. Being original or unconventional requires huge efforts because it can be hard to find something which may distinguish you from others. Measuring those characteristics is fairly easier since you can compare the guerrilla actions with others. Out-of-the-box communication or a totally different marketing approach may already be enough to be seen as original.

Active

All of the above mentioned characteristics are equally important but if you really want to boost your guerrilla strategy, you should at least make sure there is interaction between your brand and potential customers. They all should be a part of the action. Here are two examples that show you exactly what "brand activation" looks like: 

Buzz

Marketing buzz or simply buzz is the interaction of consumers and users of a product or service which amplifies or alters the original marketing message. This emotion, energy, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service can be positive or negative. Buzz can be generated by intentional marketing activities by the brand owner or it can be the result of an independent event that enters public awareness through social or traditional media. Marketing buzz originally referred to oral communication but in the age of Web 2.0, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are now the dominant communication channels for marketing buzz.

Long lasting

Many guerrilla marketing actions are limited in time. Especially those where interaction is the most important aspect. Despite this limitation, guerrilla strategies are designed on a small scale in order to generate spontaneously an independent chain reaction among people. High quality campaigns are more likely to be shared by the audience and the more they share, the longer the life cycle of the message. Once the message become viral, it will be supported by satisfied "fans" until the hype goes over. In some particular situations the online buzz can be revitalized when traditional media picks up the success of your campaigns and decides to dedicate attention to it. After all, getting free publicity is the aim of guerrilla marketers. 

The origins of guerrilla marketing

J. C. Levinson (1933 - 2013)

Guerrilla marketing was initially used by smaller businesses and dates back to the early eighties of the past century. This may sound strange since we just start to notice the growing popularity of this strategy on social media, but Jay Conrad Levinson, an American marketer and business writer, invented the above mentioned terminology in 1983. One year later, he wrote one of his most popular books ever published "Guerrilla marketing". Today there are 58 volumes in over more than 60 languages and more than 21 million copies of this guerrilla bible have been sold worldwide.

Jay Conrad Levinson's vision of Guerrilla Marketing

Jay Conrad Levinson, the Father of Guerrilla Marketing describes the concept as following: 

I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money. Guerrilla Marketing started out a single volume and has since acted biblically by being fruitful and multiplying into a library of 35 books and counting, an Association, a lush website, an abundance of video and audio versions, an email newsletter, a consulting organization, an internationally-syndicated column for newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, and presentations in enough countries for us to consider forming our own Guerrilla United Nations. (Levinson, 2014)

According to Levinson, guerrilla marketing has become one of the fastest growing kind of marketing over all the United States of America. There are two reasons for this success: first, this particular marketing approach is so easy to apply that anybody can do it. second, it works every single time on condition that you are doing it right.

What have we learnt after 30 years of guerrilla marketing?

Although J. C. Levinson had reinvented several marketing approaches which generated a totally different vision of reaching target audience, his principles nowadays seem to be quite outdated. While Levinson did not have a proper advertising budget, he has forced to look for free and useful publicity compared to the expensive traditional advertising. Shortly after the publication of Levinson's guerrilla book, many others followed the same path. Compared with modern guerrilla marketing, we cannot speak anymore about the so called "no budget marketing" approach of Levinson. I acknowledge that actual guerrilla actions are still less expensive than traditional campaigns, but they go way further than the initial principles. These days, guerrilla marketing has become part of a broader concept which calls brand activation. Especially when social media is involved, this strategy gets another dimension. 

The term, guerrilla marketing, is now often used more loosely as a descriptor for the use of non-traditional media, such as or street art, graffiti (or "reverse graffiti"), flyer-posting, ambush marketing, and forehead advertising. It may also be a strong component of promotions involving associated strategies, such as: Grassroots marketing, street marketing, internet marketing (buzz), viral marketing and even undercover or stealth marketing. 

Why this blog?

FedEx' guerrilla marketing approach

Purpose

This blog aims to share and explain all possible examples of modern brand activation within the field of guerrilla marketing. Because of the growing popularity of guerrilla marketing, it might be very useful to get familiarized with this powerful tool in order to understand how it works and more interestingly what advantages it offers. This guerrilla marketing blog will provide you with many real life campaigns and technical advice from a marketing point of view. 

Principles of guerrilla marketing

As part of modern brand activation, guerrilla marketing is focused on creating impact through rather small and creative actions, preferably with consumer interaction. According to Michels and Michels (2011) guerrilla marketing is based upon five important principles (or adjectives): unexpected, unconventional, remarkable, original and unforgettable. Those five keywords, which are very similar to the basics of  Strong's (1925) AIDA model, need to be applicable at the same moment in order to be successful. Moreover, an average guerrilla strategy should also take into account the actual needs of the chosen target groups. 

The targeted audience should actively experience a guerrilla campaign as a personal and creative approach which generates free publicity through (social) media. Therefore, such campaign have to translate exactly the key values of the target group. The range, relevance and clearness have to be measured and checked prior to the campaign launch. Placing garden gnomes on each roundabout of the city to promote the opening of a garden center can be a good guerrilla action. The same approach for the opening of a new car store would be completely irrelevant. 

A successful attempt: example

A couple of years ago, Axe made use of the well known emergency exit signs to support its campaign. The Unilever's brand stuck next to 25.000 exit signs four running ladies as if it looked like the guy was trying to escape from them. Through this clever guerrilla action, Axe actually wanted to show that men become irresistible after using Axe. 

Useful hyperlinks about guerrilla marketing:

http://guerrillacomm.com/

http://www.guerrillaonline.com/

http://www.bloguerrilla.it/

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/

http://www.ninjamarketing.it/