Using Guerrilla Marketing to Achieve Massive Brand Impact

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Guerrilla marketing is not a new concept for achieving significant brand attention. It first came into use in the mid-eighties but in the last number of years it has become a much more widely used marketing ploy, for both small and global brands alike. Its attractiveness and increasingly effective use is largely due to the ease of online sharing.

According to Jay Conrad Levinson (the man who coined the phrase), Guerrilla marketing “works because it’s simple to understand, easy to implement and outrageously inexpensive. It is about achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

   

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This makes Guerrilla marketing a particularly attractive marketing tool for small and medium size businesses alike, which are typically working with more modest budgets that usually prohibit access to large scale campaigns such as national TV or radio advertising.

 

Why is guerrilla marketing so effective? If nothing else it breaks through the monotony of traditional advertising. Today’s customers are so over loaded by multiple media channels that it often takes a special kind of advertising campaign to actually get their attention, never mind hold it long enough to make an impact.

   

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While an initial draw back of guerrilla marketing might have been the inability to aim directly at your target market, as is possible with traditional advertising channels, the popularity of sharing funny or interesting videos and images on the web has meant that even the smallest businesses are getting the attention of thousands, even millions, on the likes of Youtube. The numbers are then so high they are bound to hit some of their target customers among that mass audience!

 

While some larger companies use quite elaborate guerrilla marketing techniques to get attention such as this latest stunt from television network TNT. 

   

    

Some of the most effective guerrilla marketing campaigns have been the most simplistic, with companies thinking outside the box and playing on humour in order to gain publicity. 

     

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It must be acknowledged though that not all guerrilla campaigns have a positive effect on a company’s brand. In 2005, Sony launched a graffiti ad campaign to promote the release of its new PlayStation Portable device.

The company hired local graffiti artists to spray-paint ads depicting animated kids playing with the new video game console. The ads were featured on the sides of buildings in seven cities across the U.S., including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Sony came under fire for the campaign from city governments, many of which complained the ads violated their own anti-graffiti initiatives and encouraged vandalism.

 

In San Francisco, local residents and artists took matters into their own hands, defacing many of the designs with anti-Sony sentiments and tagging one such ad with “Fony.” Sony defended the campaign, stating the marketing was meant to target the “urban nomad.”

     

Skoda Mercedes

     

When deciding to engage in a guerrilla marketing campaign you need to consider it in the broader context of your company’s brand message. It is not just about getting attention. It’s about adding another layer to how your customer thinks about, and engages with your brand. 

 

The campaign’s message must be congruent with your other marketing communications, all of which must be true to your core brand message. Maintaining consistency in your brand communications is critical and on no account should you risk confusing your customers or send them mixed messages.

 

If your business is in insurance and is strongly reliant on building customer trust than perhaps a guerrilla campaign is not the best tactic for you. If you think it fits with your company’s brand image then ask yourself: 

  • Would it fit within your current brand strategy?
  • Would it appeal to your target market?
  • How would it reinforce your other marketing activity?
  • Could it offer a point of differentiation over your competitors?
  • What call to action would you desire from your customers?

  

And most importantly, could you handle the potential additional business if the campaign went viral?

   

  

Maximizing Profitability: Training Your Employees To Be Brand Champions

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In Ireland, possibly more so than in any other European country, a company’s reputation is the foundation from which strong brands evolve. We may be known for our talkers but the result of all this chatter can have a significant impact on Irish businesses where a restricted market size often means that word-of-mouth endorsement, or criticism from customers can make or break the reputation of a business, particularly in the early years. 

 

I have spoken before about the impact a leader can have on shaping their company’s brand and developing the brand image from the inside out.  One of the strongest ways a leader can develop their brand is through their selection of employees and how they inspire their employees to become genuine brand champions or custodians of their brand.

 

While marketing plays a strong role in shaping the external identity of the brand, employees are a critical asset that cannot be overlooked in creating a strong brand and positive reputation for your company.

   

Employee Brand Champion

  

Your employees not only spread your brand message with your customers, but also through their friends and family, and publicly on their online networks. Your employees are involved in the core of your business so their opinions on your company/brand(s) are very important.

 

How do you make sure your employees are spreading the right brand message? What can you do to influence how your employees impact on your brand? The key is to turn their role in the company from being standard employees to becoming highly informed brand champions or brand ambassadors.

 

Whether your business offering is as tangible as selling a car or as intangible as selling insurance over the phone, the service the customer receives during those few minutes of interaction with your company employee (the human extension of your brand) will strongly shape his or her impression of your brand.

 

 Customer Brand Champions

  

Every positive experience, or negative interaction for that matter, that occurs between your frontline staff and your customer establishes trust and credibility, bolstering your company’s brand reputation or equally undermining it too if badly represented.

 

When your customer then shares this positive (or negative) experience with their friends and family they are inadvertently advertising your brand and helping shape your brand image. Never forget, referral is one of the strongest and most trusted forms of brand endorsement, and never more so then in this world of instant viral communication.

 

Developing brand champions begins with ensuring that your employee’s brand training and internal cultural experience of your brand, and the image it aspires to create, is fully aligned with your company’s brand strategy.

 

Right now, if you asked each of your employees, from those in your accounts department to your frontline staff, to stand up and give a short pitch about your business would they all be able to say the same thing?

 

Does their impression of your business brand match that which you believe or have set out to achieve? They must really live and believe your brand to authentically share your brand message with the outside world. If your own employees cannot fully articulate what your company’s brand is all about, the do’s and don’ts of how they interact and what your brand stands for, then how can they be expected to communicate your brand effectively to your customers?

  

Building Your Brand

 

Leading a company with a powerful team of brand champions is essential to the success of your brand and ultimately the profitability of your business. In short it must be incorporated into your overall brand building strategy if you want to be a market leader. Doing so will not only strengthen your brand and company reputation but it will also:

 

1. Increase Motivation: A workforce that believes in what they do and what the company is striving to accomplish will naturally be motivated to achieve their goals and therefore productivity and profitability will increase.

 

2. Increase Word-of-Mouth Promotion: An employee who truly believes in your brand is more likely to naturally share their enthusiasm with family and friends and will be an advocate for your brand even outside normal work hours.

 

3. Improve Service: an employee who really believes in your brand will embrace a sense of ownership in their work and the service they provide, which will result in a greatly improved customer experience.

 

4. Reduce Employee Turn-over: a brand champion who believes in your brand will also be less likely to leave a position in which they are motivated and satisfied with their work. In fact if employees speak highly and openly about your brand, your company has a better chance of increasing retention rates and attracting new high performing, talent.

 

If you want your employees to become brand ambassadors then get them onboard, share and educate them in your brand vision. Make sure they really understand at a fundamental level what your brand is all about. Explain to them how important they are in the process of building the company brand.

 

A positive brand image leads to loyal customers, strong referral sources and solid internal growth. Bottom line: Take care of your employees and they in turn will take care of your brand. They are your strongest brand advocates, but they can’t champion your brand effectively if they don’t understand it or buy into it.

 

• Do your employees know and understand your main brand message and what your brand’s image is?

 

• Do they know how your brand is positioned relative to similar brands on the market?

 

• Are your employee’s impressions of the brand aligned with that of the company?

 

• Most importantly, does your company have a clear brand strategy that can be articulated to and through your employees?

 

Feel free to get in touch. We’d love to hear your thoughts and would be delighted to answer any questions asked.

Are You Leading Your Brand Effectively to Maximize Commercial Success?

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Branding is not just about big business. Regardless of whether you have a specific brand strategy in place or not, if you are operating in business then you have a brand – good or bad, weak or strong.

 

In small and medium businesses the single greatest influence on the business brand is the company leader. Think about it. Even if the company has marketing personnel, the final decisions and creative control lie with the executive director. This is something many leaders of small and medium enterprises fail to recognize.

 

Remember, your business brand goes far beyond the just the name and logo. Your website design, your marketing message, your staff, your pricing policy, the look of your business interior, your brand collateral, your customer service together with the whole culture of your business all shape your customer’s perception of your business and your brand. And who has overall control of these elements? The leader. So whether intentional or not, for better or worse, as leader you are currently shaping the development of your business brand.

 

Building a strong brand starts from the inside. Whatever happens inside the business reflects what the customers perceive from the outside.  I am sure we all know of a local business we love to visit because the staff are friendly and helpful. In more cases than not, this is because the owner is the friendliest and most helpful of them all. The owner is the influencer who affects everything around them within the business and beyond.

 

In fact, many of the world’s biggest brands are shaped by the vision of their leaders.  Anyone who has read Steve Jobs biography knows that he was the visionary of the Apple brand. He influenced everything about the brand. Apple is design obsessed because Steve Jobs was design obsessed.

Steve Jobs Apple

 

If we think about the brand personality of Ryanair, we think abrasive, sometimes downright rude, unfriendly, brash but invariably the best deal and on time. Now think about Michael O’Leary, Ryanairs CEO, any of those traits come to mind?! It’s no accident that these characteristics are cultivated as part of his public persona to congruently fit with the brand, like it or hate it!

 

Michael O Leary Ryanair

You can make similar leadership and brand visionary comparisons with Richard Branson and the Virgin brand, amongst others, a very different brand and leadership style but he is undoubtably a very shrewd leader of the Virgin brand. And these are global companies. In small and medium companies where the business leader has total control on decisions, they intentionally or otherwise shape the brand more than anyone else.

 

We know that some business leaders are better than others in terms of skills and knowledge and this has an obvious effect on the financial success of one business over its competitors.  But business acumen aside, when a business leader is closely associated with the embodiment of a brand their sheer existence in the company has an effect on people’s confidence in the company performance and ultimately the profitability of the business.

 

Steve Jobs is one of the greatest examples of how strong the influence of a leader is on a brand. When Steve Jobs resigned from Apple the company’s shares dropped as much as 7%. This company is a global titan, with some of the world’s greatest minds and strongest business strategists at its helm, and yet, without Jobs’ involvement customers were wary because Apple had become synonymous with Jobs and his utter embodiment of what made Apple ‘Apple’. Customers found it to difficult to separate the brand from the leader, ultimately affecting the company’s bottom line.

 

If your business is not performing or where you want it to be, you need to look at what you are doing to influence those in your company, your brand and how its perceived internally and externally and the service you provide.

 

If you don’t have a clear vision of what your business brand identity is, what your brand stands for and how it engages with your target audience in a way that matters to them, then how can your business have a clear strategy ?

 

The huge positive for leaders of small and medium businesses is that building a strong brand is not difficult, done correctly and with the right team expertise on board to support you, because it starts with you. 

 

If you are serious about building a strong brand for your company and maximizing your profit potential then the first step is to undertake brand profiling for your business. Understanding your brand’s current position and identity in the market will help you on your way to understand the role you can play in shaping it to greater profitability for the future.

 

Your business’ brand strategy lies in your hands and with it the growing profitability and success of your business.

As the leader of your business do you know what aspects of your brand are working effectively, or falling short and in need attention or just tired, out of touch and in need of repositioning and revitalisation to increase your commercial returns ?