Guerilla see, Guerilla do
What was originally a form of displaying disrespect to predominant authority is now the 'coolest' new kid on the media block. ad agencies coin any untried form of advertising 'guerilla' these days.
wikipedia defines the term as follows:
Guerrilla (also called a partisan) is a term borrowed from Spanish (from "guerra" meaning war) used to describe small combat groups. Guerrilla warfare operates with small, mobile and flexible combat groups called cells, without a front line. Guerrilla warfare is one of the oldest forms of asymmetric warfare. Primary contributors to modern theories of guerrilla war include Mao Zedong, Wendell Fertig, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Che Guevara....
so guerilla marketing is the bastard son of the then innovative guerilla warfare. why coin new terms to solve old problems?
in all probability, the first cave paintings were frowned upon by cave-society. grafitti artists, or taggers are prosecuted for defacing public property. these artists are far ahead of the advertisers. they take their art to where it really matters. in new york, LA and detroit, you will see sexy anti-AIDS and anti-political advertising on street walls. even awesome branding concepts. beautifully executed, with amazing attention to detail. sometimes spanning whole lengths of streets. whats illegal/shameful to some is 'art' to others.
no wonder, trendwhore designers these days take a spraypaint splatter or a funky 'drip' [see above] to spruce up their web-pages or ad layouts. looks good, don't it? take out that dormant spraycan and deface a road sign today.
IMO, advertisers probably take so much studying and research into deciding what the consumer wants, and how to approach the consumer, that they actually forget to listen to the consumer! Thats probably why graffiti works so well with very controversial topics. There's more emotion in them and its waaaaay more personal...
i agree with that. when an artist is personally involved with the art, it usually speaks volumes more. and artists have always been underestimated.
I don't even know if Guerilla Marketing is all that cool any longer. There are so many bad and wannabe examples out there that I sometimes refrain from using the word.
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