In the never-ending quest for free publicity, guerilla marketers have gone through great lengths to try to make a big splash. Many guerilla marketers will often concoct stunts that are risky or illegal to grab the publics’ attention. Some stunts go over better than others while a few completely backfire. As a tribute to these foolhardy souls, WebUrbanist has put together their top 5 mishaps in guerilla marketing. The list, inside…
5. Goldenpalace.com at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
A man donning a purple tutu with the words “Goldenpalace.com” painted on his torso, jumped off of a high dive board into the olympic swimming pool. Greek officials were not pleased, slapping the man with 3 months in Greek prison. Ultimately, he was released and given a fine of a few hundred dollars.
4. Microsoft Zune at South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.
At the SXSW, a man was simply posting bright large Zune posters in different locations, but it would seem that the hatred of Zune spreads far and wide. He was detained and handcuffed by police as onlookers were heard yelling things such as, “We’ll have none of your advertising for your DRM’d crippleware’d crappy MP3 player littering our town!”
3. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” movie poster campaign.
This campaign featured posters across the country that read, “You suck Sarah Marshall.” However, the real Sarah Marshalls’ of the country were none too pleased. In response, new posters went up that read, “You suck Judd Apatow,” a hostile salute to the film’s producer.
2. Nvidia manufactures hype with fake forum fanfare.
A few years ago, Nivdia was accused of making fake posts in forums to tout their new product. This is probably the most common guerilla-marketing tactic since it is so easy to do. Because Nvidia is such a big company with a ravenous fan base, their forum forgeries seem to be the most infamous. The Consumerist featured this story in early 2006.
1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Boston bomb scare of 2007.
Approximately 20 glowing signs depicting a character from the cartoon series were mounted in strategic areas around Boston, including places around bridges and overpasses. The areas seemed a little too strategic for Boston officials who summoned the bomb squad to dismantle the innocuous signs. The stunt cost Turner Broadcasting Company $2 million which went to reimburse Boston PD and Homeland Security. Apparently, the city feared the dreaded “Lite Brite” bomb, so popular among terrorists.
5 Great Examples of Guerilla Marketing Gone Wrong: Olympic Belly-Flops To the Boston Bomb Scare [WebUrbanist]
(Photo: WebUrbanist)
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ATHF FTW !!!!
proof of a sad, paranoid society.
The ATHF thing was just redonkulous. If you haven’t seen the press conference the guys gave about it… HILARIOUS
@Balisong: That’s why I didn’t say that no one did.
@spinachdip: Yeah but “lots of people talking about it” does not mean “lots of people bought the product/service they’re talking about”. Maybe they convinced enough people and maybe they didn’t but the fact that we’re talking about the ads doesn’t mean the ads were successful.
@AD8BC: My new big pet peeve: watering down the concept of words so that they no longer carry any meaning. Now here, “littering”? Throwing a bag of garbage on the side of the road is littering. But constructing an electric sign for advertising and entertainment purposes? It’s not a printed piece of paper as the guys in the website you linked to talk about cleaning up. These guys could have done this for guerilla art purposes – would you still consider it littering? This concept you’ve constructed of “littering” goes against everything I believe as an artist. This is, of course, all completely irrelevant, because the problem Boston had with the signs wasn’t that they were littering.
@Rectilinear Propagation: Okay, let me rephrase it this way – if those same products were advertised in traditional channels, would it make a difference? I’m going to guess that you weren’t in the market for them – if that’s the case, then that means the guerrilla advertisers saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on media placement since the end result was going to be the same. In that sense, they were successful in not wasting money advertising to you.
But more to the point:
*ATHF, even with the Boston PD overreaction, was a success – the goal was to remind viewers of the upcoming season of the show, which the news media did over and over. And the controversy probably worked nicely as a piece of branding, reinforcing the position of the show and its fans as irreverent and anti-authority.
*Zune mockery may be big on the internet, but it’s still a very, very, very minor player in the mp3 game. That was probably the first time a non-tech/business reporter ever talked about it.
*There’s very little differentiation among online gambling sites, yet Goldenpalace.com managed to be a leader in the category. The tattoo stunts have everything to do with that.
@Rectilinear Propagation: So why does a piece of advertising have to work specifically on you in order for it to be successful? If enough people bought the product, it’s successful advertising.
Not being snarky, just saying. It’s odd to say “This didn’t work on me, therefore it’s worthless.” :
@Spinfusor: One doesn’t have to be “overly sensitive” to be offended by this. If it were my name on the billboards, I would have gone straight to the attorneys, no questions asked. It’s stupid, it’s offensive, and it’s definitely lawsuit-worthy.
If there’s still anyone out there that thinks Boston didn’t overreact, it’s worth noting that that same campaign was carried out in (I think) five other major cities with no problems.
@Steaming Pile: I hope you’re joking or trolling.
@Balisong: Good God, for an artist, you sure have a lot of bitterness bottled up inside. It’s not good for you.
I have no problem with art, even when I need to put “art” in quotation marks to qualify it as such.
But get permission to put it up first. And take it down when you are done.
I thought another Zune marketing campaign deserved to be on the list.
Someone decided it’d be a great idea to drive a car with its Zunified stereo system blasting music full volume around a New York City neighborhood at 1am at night.
This was around the same time with the Zune marketing campaign on the list. I’m too lazy to google the details, but it was pretty bad. The residents were getting VERY angry. I’m actually surprised they didn’t beat up the driver.
I nominate the US Cellular “Talk Until You’re Blue in the Face” campaign that put people painted blue on Chicago’s CTA pretending to talk on the phone and annoying us all.
You can read more about it here.
Wasn’t it microsoft that was sticking a bunch of adhesive butterflies around some city? I may be wrong about the company or the shape of the stickers, but I do remember a big controversy about it.
@AD8BC: Good God, for an artist, you sure have a lot of bitterness bottled up inside.
You don’t know many artists, do you?
Anyway, I’m just saying, don’t just jump up and yell “OMG teh litter!” That’s ignoring intent. And that’s exactly what happened in Boston; people jumped up and assumed someone was trying to scare the populace, when it was all only advertising and entertainment. You can’t just accuse someone of something without looking at their intentions. That’s what’s gone wrong with so many laws in the US.
I agree alliwantforxmasisapsp.com deserves the win or a least a high spot. All the guerilla marketing stupidities I’ve seen from the Zune are as pathetic as the Zune itself. You should count all the bloggers and tech reviewers they had under their pockets yet still the Zune can’t even catch up to SanDisk, which spends almost nothing in marketing.
@Balisong: I though all of your bitterness was supposed to be released in your work!
Look, I didn’t mean to offend you by my choice of words. I meant “litter” to the extent that, what would the probability be that those who placed them would retrieve them when the batteries ran out? I’m sure you’ve seen in your neighborhood the two month old tattered garage sale sign stapled to the telephone pole that already has hundreds of nails in it from previous signs? Because of that, some cities around me are allowing people who are having garage sales to have a maximum of two signs, provided by the city. From one extreme — freedom to post temporary signs — to another, government regulation of garage sales. In between, you have those that voluntarily clean up after themselves, and then you have illegal and ugly advertisements for commercial businesses ruining it for everybody.
I call a truce, man.
@lesspopmorefizz:
You think that’s pathetic? Less than one month later, the Boston PD detonated one of Boston’s own traffic counters thinking they were IEDs.
Clearly they did not learn from their mistakes.
1-31-07: Proving how collectively stupid Boston is compared to New York.
@AD8BC: Such signs never bother me…maybe because I look at them and think that one day I’ll be living in Vermont again and won’t have to deal with that crap…one day… But I do look at old tattered billboards that noone is advertising on anymore and think what an eyesore. Noone takes those down either!
@AD8BC: and the movie sucked too
@AD8BC:
If it hadn’t been for the BAFFLINGLY heavy-handed (and brain-dead) response from the Boston authorities, it would not have been possible to side with the perpetrators.
Seriously, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a greater act of stupidity on the part of law enforcement in the US in my lifetime, and that includes the Rodney King beating.
Only in Berkeley:
[i118.photobucket.com]
Do you really think cops get up close and personal with a box containing wires and electronics and decide, with their bomb squad knowledge, that it’s not abomb? No, they see an unattended box and they’re required, by law, to bring in the bomb squad. This costs the city money, a lot of it. This leads to public panic as people see uniformed bomb squad officers working over boxes all over the city.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not a bomb, they have to treat it as one, because some stupid fuck could put a LED display of Hello Kitty on his bomb that kills thousands.
What adult swim did was stupid, childish, and irresponsible. They cost the city a lot of money and frightened a lot of people.
@AD8BC:
Of course they did… ATHF is AWESOME.
@Rectilinear Propagation: “Doesn’t advertising have to convince you to buy their product or service to be considered successful?”
Not necessarily. It’s not just about getting you to buy a product, it’s also about name recognition. So while you may never buy a Zune, you’re more aware of the brand due to a marketing campaign (even a failed one).
@nardo218: Then can you explain NY’s reaction, and how noone was scared in Ny or Chicago or LA?
I think as a nation we’ve watched too many movies when we think every bomb/terrorist attack has to involve brightly-lit LEDs. Also, what’s with the seran-wrap on the light-pole or whatever in the Zune photo?
I am sorry, but i would say that the whole Mooninite ‘bomb’ scare did exactly what it was supposed too.
Boston PD/Homeland sercurity should have been fired for being utterly clueless. I don’t want morons protecting this country.
@AD8BC:
@skilled1:
I know! I can’t beleive they thought blinking lights hung obviously for weeks would NOT be considered a bomb! It’s not like it was done in nine other cities without incident…
[en.wikipedia.org]
@nardo218: The signs blinked and were up for weeks. What bomber advertises his bomb publicly, but waits WEEKS to detonate? Do you seriously think the officers hadn’t seen these for a week?
@skilled1
Exactly.It proved how awesome ATHF is and how clueless and stupid the Boston PD is
@nardo218
Wow……..FEMA called.They need their spokesperson back..