Guerrilla marketing

There’s no doubt that guerrilla marketing can provide fantastic results while allowing marketers to exercise their creativity in a unique way, but it will only work for businesses who aren’t afraid of risk-taking.

 

Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy concept designed for businesses to promote their products or services in an unconventional way with little budget to spend. This involves high energy and imagination focusing on grasping the attention of the public in more personal and memorable level. Considering the rewards for pulling off a good campaign, it's no surprise that guerrilla marketing is becoming more popular. The lower costs and the opportunity to surprise and amaze people are some of the reasons why this method is becoming more widespread among agencies. When done right, it can land a brand (and agency) a lot of attention, free publicity and if it's really good, the chance to go viral. This article shares a few visual case study examples for you to sink your teeth into.

When the traditional strategies aren’t delivering, you send in the guerrillas. They’re the extra-special forces – the ones that implement killer strategies to turn the tide and defeat the enemy. Guerrilla marketing is a great alternative to traditional marketing. It thrives on original thinking and creativity, where imagination and ingenuity beat out big budgets. Guerrilla marketing tends to be cheaper than traditional marketing, relying on smaller, more localized brick and mortar strategies like:

Graffiti: Graffiti marketing uses city streets and alleyways as a giant canvas. While smaller, more covert operations will make their mark wherever they want, for most businesses it’s recommended to get permission from a property owner before going Monet on the walls of their establishment.

Stencil Graffiti: Stencil graffiti uses stencils to create repeated works of street art. The advantage of stencils is that you can create multiple instances of your art across many different spaces in a short period of time. Stencils tend to be small in size (as opposed to a full-wall mural) and consist of simple designs.

Reverse Graffiti: Reverse graffiti is when, instead of adding to a surface, marketers remove dirt and grime from a street or wall to create an all-natural marking message. Just put a stencil on a sidewalk and then wash the uncovered spaces!

 

Stickers: Creative use of stickers is another great guerrilla marketing tactic that can be very successful when implemented well.

Undercover Marketing: Also known as “stealth marketing,” marketers disguise themselves as peers amongst their target audience. One example is Sony’s campaign in 2002, in which actors were hired to wander about cities, asking strangers to take a photo of them. During the interaction, actors would rave of their cool new phone, boasting of its features and capabilities.

Flash Mobs: Flash mobs involve organizing a group of individuals to perform a specific action or task at a pre-determined location and time. In some cases participants are hired actors, other times they are simply members of the community who enjoy the randomness of flash mobs!

Publicity Stunts: Publicity stunts involve specific feats of awe and amazement, usually sponsored or in partner with a brand. Red Bull is very adept at this practice, exemplified by their 2012 skydiving record as part of their Stratos project. Red Bull sent Austrian extreme-sports athlete Felix Baumgartner above the stratosphere, dominating the world record for highest skydive, launching himself from over 128,000 feet above earth. Arguably much more than a mere stunt, the Red Bull Stratos project set numerous world records and was viewed live on YouTube by over 9.5 million users (setting yet another record).

Treasure Hunts: Creating custom, high-quality treasure hunts is another cool guerrilla marketing tactic that can energize audiences. Guerrilla marketing treasure hunts often involve posting online clues to hidden items scattered across a single or several cities. Winners are rewarded with digital codes, prizes, or a hint for the next level of the treasure hunt.

Urban Environment: The most successful guerrilla marketing strategies make great use of the spaces around them. Urban environments allow for many opportunities to implement clever marketing strategies.

While today we’re mostly showing physical, visual examples of guerrilla marketing, there are plenty of online examples. Online guerrilla marketing campaigns often appear in the form of:

• Viral videos

• User generated content competitions

• Creative landing pages

Guerrilla Marketing Pros and Cons – Guerrilla marketing has some advantages and disadvantages. Take both into consideration before choosing to move forward with a campaign.

Pros of Guerrilla Marketing:

• Cheap to execute. Whether using a simple stencil or a giant sticker, guerrilla marketing tends to be much cheaper than classic advertising.

• Allows for creative thinking. With guerrilla marketing, imagination is more important than budget.

• Grows with word-of-mouth. Guerrilla marketing relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing, considered by many one of the most powerful weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. There’s nothing better than getting people to talk about your campaign on their own accord.

• Publicity can snowball. Some especially noteworthy or unique guerrilla marketing campaigns will get picked up by local (and even national) news sources, resulting in a publicity powerhouse affect that marketers drool over.

Cons of Guerrilla Marketing:

• Mysterious messages can be misunderstood. There’s often an air of mystery to guerrilla marketing campaigns, and while it’s this sense of mystery that can often propel a campaign’s attention and notice, the lack of clarity can also skew audience interpretation. The confusion associated with guerrilla marketing campaigns can have extreme implications, such as in 2007, when flashing LED circuit boards promoting a new animated series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, were quietly installed around the city of Boston. The objects were mistaken for explosive devices, causing citywide panic as bomb squads were brought in to examine and remove the unknown devices.The hired installers were even arrested for mounting “hoax devices,” but were later released. While it’d be easy to label this campaign as a disaster, the story got picked up on major media networks across the country, so despite the whole ordeal, some would probably call it a success.

• Authority intervention. Some forms of guerrilla marketing, such as non-permission street graffiti, can result in tension with authorities.

• Unpredicted obstacles. Many guerrilla marketing tactics are susceptible to bad weather, thrown timing, and other small instances that could easily threaten to undermine an entire campaign.

• Potential backlash. Savvy audiences may call out businesses who are implementing guerrilla marketing campaigns they don’t approve of. This is especially true of undercover marketing campaigns – if you’re caught, prepare to face the wrath.

There’s no doubt that guerrilla marketing can provide fantastic results while allowing marketers to exercise their creativity in a unique way, but it will only work for businesses who aren’t afraid of risk-taking.

 

 

 

 

 

Apple is on the verge of becoming the first American company to be worth $1 trillion.

Apple is now worth about $945 billion. Shares are up more than 13% this year, far better than the overall market. For Apple to hit a $1 trillion market valuation, the stock would need to go up just another 6% to $202.30 a share.
 

Even though some think Apple (AAPL) needs a new product to keep sales and profit booming, Apple has inched closer to $1 trillion thanks to solid sales of the iPhone 8 and X -- particularly in China and Japan -- and surging services revenue from the App Store.

Apple's sales increased 16% in the first three months of 2018 -- not bad for a company of its massive size.

It also has been using its more than $267 billion in cash to boost its dividend and stock buyback program as a way of rewarding investors, which include Warren Buffett.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB)bought nearly 75 million shares of Apple in the first quarter, making it Berkshire's top stock holding.

Related: Apple is showering its investors with cash

But Apple is benefiting from investor euphoria surrounding the tech sector broadly as well.

Amazon (AMZN) is also trading at an all-time high and is now worth more than $800 billion. That's lifted the net worth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to nearly $140 billion, according to lists by Forbes and Bloomberg tracking the world's wealthiest people.

 

Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) have rallied to near record highs this year too. They are each now worth more than $775 billion.

Facebook (FB), despite its Cambridge Analytica woes, is not far from its all-time high either. It has a market value of nearly $560 billion.

Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are now collectively worth about $3.9 trillion.

But Apple would not be the first publicly traded company in the world to surpass the trillion dollar mark.

Oil giant PetroChina (PTR) briefly topped a trillion dollar valuation in 2007 when its stock began trading in Shanghai, but shares quickly plunged afterward. PetroChina, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is now worth about $240 billion.

​

CNNMoney (New York)First published June 5, 2018: 9:33 AM ET

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Things You Need-To-Know When Marketing To Millennials.

Millennials make up the biggest part of the work force. They are steadily taking over the ground vacated by the retiring Baby Boomer Generation. Like every generation that came before, they come with their own set of characteristics that make them unique. No company can afford to ignore their enormous purchasing power.

Here are the main things you need to know about marketing to Millennials.

They are not the same – This is the number one thing you need to know about Millennials. They are not like other generations in that they are a simple demographic. You have to drill down deep into the millennial generation to come up with the right marketing campaign for you.

Millennials are the most diverse generation to have ever existed. You’ll find Millennials consisting of everyone from single mothers to middle class professionals. You’ll find them in every single social class and industry from apps to fashion trends and marketing.

Marketers must think in terms of these segments, rather than demographics.

Millennials are forever connected – The millennial generation was the first to grow up with technology at their fingertips. They are used to always being connected. The majority of Millennials will be connected to multiple tech devices at the same time. Without constant access to the Internet they’re going to feel helpless.

Brands will have to maintain constant communication with Millennials. They need to be able to provide a lot of support whenever Millennials want it. The 9-5 lifestyle is dead.

This is a sharing culture – Even the most novice marketer can spot the fact Millennials are spending more time on social media than ever before. To reach this audience your brand has to be on social media. It’s symbolic of the sharing culture that has grown up around Millennials. Companies on the cutting edge of marketing are always sharing and always looking for new ways to engage in the social arena.

But not every social media site is right for you. Go back to thinking in segments and consider where your segment is likely to be hanging out.

Forget about the hard sell – The hard sell has become something of a piece of satire in the eyes of Millennials. They don’t respond to the salesperson following them around screaming about how great their products are. The hard sell is gone and you need to let Millennials make buying decisions for themselves.

For example, in the fashion industry shops are employing influencers to promote their products. Seeing others wearing something is much more powerful than a hard sell.

Why is this the case? Millennials value authenticity over everything else. They’re more likely to listen to a fellow consumer, as opposed to a piece of promotional copy.

Millennials are moving fast – The reason why Millennials are moving fast is partly because of the mobile revolution. The rise of mobile has meant that they can stay connected wherever they happen to be. Marketers can no longer assume Millennials are in their homes when they access their websites.

What it all means in practice is that marketing has turned into an omnichannel issue. Retail strategies have had to adapt to this. There’s no such thing as online, offline, and mobile strategies. They’ve all been merged into one.

Loyalty is hard to win – Millennials are not going to stick with the big name brands. The baby boomer generation, on the other hand, would do this because they felt more secure in sticking with a brand they knew. The rise of Millennials has forced brands to stop relying on the idea that they can expect to gain loyalty from customers. Marketers have to actively win it and hold it.

This plays into the stereotype that Millennials are disloyal and they won’t stick with anything for any length of time. That demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding, though. They may be harder to sway to your cause, but when they do become loyal they tend to be the most loyal consumers around.

Marketers have to realize that retaining loyalty is a constant process.

Conclusion: Marketers need to adapt to Millennials making up the bulk of the workforce. Learn what they respond to and what matters to them. It could just be the breakthrough your business needs to move forward into the future.

Source: forbes.com AJ Agrawal , Contributor

 

 

Study: When it comes to advertising, sex doesn’t actually sell.

Sex may sell itself, but that doesn’t mean it sells everything. A new study suggests that while advertisements with sex may grab your attention, they’re not good at actually selling you stuff. Sex may sell itself, but that doesn’t mean it sells everything. A new study suggests that while advertisements with sex may grab your attention, they’re not good at actually selling you stuff.

In a meta-analysis of 53 experiments involving nearly 8,500 participants, researchers from Ohio State University examined the effectiveness of sex and violence in advertisements. To synthesize the data, the researchers coded past experiments in which participants reported on their memory of, attitudes toward, and intentions to buy products after they watched TV or films or played video games, or saw ads in print. They studied both neutral ads shown during sexual and/or violent TV programs, as well as ads containing sexual and violent content themselves.

Participants in the experiments, published in late July by Psychological Bulletin, viewed brands that used sexual ads (which could be anything from a fully clothed but extremely sexualized model to actual sexual organs) less favorably than brands that featured neutral ads. Brands that showed ads during violent programs were remembered less often, viewed less favorably, and were less likely to be purchased. As the report stated, “Violence and sex never helped and often hurt ad effectiveness.”

Lead researcher Brad Bushman explained the findings to Quartz as follows: “Humans are hard-wired to pay attention to violence and sex, but they only have a limited capacity to pay attention. If they’re focused on the violence or sex in a video game or magazine, they have less attention to pay to a Tide laundry detergent.”

More research would be needed to examine the effect of sex and violence in ads on attention span. But in support of that theory, the report found that, as ads got sexier, people were less likely to remember, like, and buy the associated product.

For more click to review the full study: new study

Source: http://qz.com, Written by Thu-Huong Ha 

 

 

Visual grammar.
The term grammar refers to the system, structure and elements of a language or area of knowledge. A language is a method of human communication. We are aware of this through the spoken and written word. Visual communication is also reliant on a language of its own.

 

In order to communicate using this language it’s necessary to understand what its components are, what the relationship between the components are, and how they are used to create meaning and enable understanding. Acquiring knowledge of visual grammar will not only be fundamental to your practice of visual communication but will allow you to articulate through the spoken and written word the concepts behind your ideas. Many artists and designers have been fascinated by the fundamental components of visual language.

 

Visual language is comprised of simple fundamental components such as dots, lines, circles, squares and triangles. Color, texture and space are also basic elements of visual language.

Certain shapes have become connected with deeper psychological associations we have as humans and our existential experiences. Circles have strong meaning in terms of our knowledge of the universe. Our planet, the sun and moon are circular and this has a particular resonance with us. Squares are solid and stable. We use these associations when making compositions in the abstract to represent our concrete (real) world. Visual language can be manipulated to express, represent and communicate understandable concepts such as rhythm; speed (fast/slow); distance (near/far); movement (direction – up/ down, forward/backward, left/right); denseness; space; weight (heavy/light), force (strong/weak); impact; light/dark; proximity (close/apart); and structure (regular/irregular).

 

Squares and rectangles are stable – They’re familiar and trusted shapes and suggest honesty. They have right angles and represent order, mathematics, rationality, and formality. They are seen as earthbound. Rectangles are the most common geometric shape encountered. The majority of text we read is set in rectangles or squares. Squares and rectangles suggest conformity, peacefulness, solidity, security, and equality. Their familiarity and stability, along with their commonness can seem boring. They are generally not attention getters, but can be tilted to add an unexpected twist. Think of web pages that tilts framed images to help them stand out. Every element on a web page is defined by a rectangle according to the css box model. Web pages are rectangles made up of smaller rectangles and squares. In Buddhist symbolism a square (earthbound) inside a circle (eternal whole) represents the relationship between the human and the divine.

 

Triangles can be stable when sitting on their base or unstable when not – They represent dynamic tension, action, and aggression. Triangles have energy and power and their stable/unstable dynamic can suggest either conflict or steady strength. They are balanced and can be a symbol for law, science, and religion. Triangles can direct movement based which way they point. They can be used to suggest familiar themes like pyramids, arrows and, pennants. Spiritually they represent the religious trinity. They can suggest self-discovery and revelation. The strength of triangles suggests masculinity. Their dynamic nature make them better suited to a growing high tech company than a stable financial institution when designing a logo. Triangles can be used to convey progression, direction, and purpose.

 

Crosses symbolize spirituality and healing – They are seen as the meeting place of divine energies. The 4 points of a cross represent self, nature, wisdom, and higher power or being. Crosses suggest transition, balance, faith, unity, temperance, hope, and life. They represent relationships and synthesis and a need for connection to something, whether that something is group, individual, self, or project related. As with lines vertical shapes are seen as strong and horizontal shapes are seen as peaceful. Most everything said about vertical and horizontal lines can be said about vertical and horizontal shapes.

 

Spirals are expressions of creativity – They are often found in the natural growth pattern of many organisms and suggest the process of growth and evolution. Spirals convey ideas of fertility, birth, death, expansion, and transformation. They are cycles of time, life, and the seasons and are a common shape in religious and mystical symbolism. Spirals move in either direction and represent returning to the same point on life’s journey with new levels of understanding. They represent trust during change, the release of energy and maintaining flexibility through transformation. Clockwise spirals represent projection of an intention and counterclockwise spirals the fulfillment of an intention. Double spirals can be used to symbolize opposing forces.

 

 

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. While the Internet is, perhaps, the channel most closely associated with digital marketing, others include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.

 

Digital marketers monitor things like what is being viewed, how often and for how long, sales conversions, what content works and doesn’t work, etc. Digital marketing differs from traditional marketing in that it involves the use of channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time.

 

Why Digital Marketing is Important
Digital media is so pervasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it. Gone are the days when the messages people got about your products or services came from you and consisted of only what you wanted them to know. Digital media is an ever-growing source of entertainment, news, shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now exposed not just to what your company says about your brand, but what the media, friends, relatives, and peers are saying too. What’s more, they are more likely to believe them than you. People want brands they can trust, companies that know them, communications that are personalized and relevant, and offers tailored to their needs and preferences.  This is the new era of communication.

 

Digital Media is Everywhere
Here are some interesting statistics on our first post delving into this exciting world:

• Digital marketing spend is forecasted to increase to 35% of total budgets by 2016.

• Content creation and management now claim the second largest share of digital marketing budgets. 

• 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budget to fund more digital marketing.

• Search engine marketing (SEM) will continue to capture the largest share of online spend at 47%, or about 14% of the firm’s total marketing budget 2014.

• 60% of B2B marketers use web traffic to measure success instead of using sales lead quality or social media sharing.

• 84% of top performing companies are using or plan to start using marketing automation by 2015. (

• Online display advertising (banner ads, re-marketing, and re-targeting) will capture the next biggest share of the online spend at about 34% of total online spend and about 10% of the total marketing budget. 

• 73% of B2B marketers use video as a content marketing tactic, and 7% of marketers plan on increasing their YouTube marketing. 

• 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands they follow. 

• Organic search leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound marketing leads have a 1.7% close rate. 

• In 2016, the average firm will allocate 30% of their marketing budget to online, this rate is expected to grow to 35% by 2019

• Search engine marketing (SEO & SEM) will capture the largest share of online spend with online display (banner ads, online video, etc.) taking the second largest share

• Social media investments will continue to grow as an overall share of online spend, but will only represent about 15% of the total online spend

• Mobile marketing has grown to a point that it’s no longer tracked in the forecast and it’s presumed to be considered across all channels