Guerrilla Marketing

The term Guerrilla Marketing covers a multitude of different marketing approaches and scenarios.

It is sometime misconstrued as illegal or confrontational activity due to the connotations of "Guerrilla Warfare" (1809 - OED). The key to why this term has been adopted is best seen in the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for Guerrilla.

Guerrilla. An irregular war carried on by small bodies of men acting independently.

Replacing, “war” with “marketing campaign” we are left with a definition for Guerrilla Marketing (as long as we accept “men” to be a genus and not a gender statement!)

Common elements of Guerrilla Marketing:

Low cost - as compared to regular marketing budgets
Viral - using word-of-mouth to propagate the message
Subversive - verfremdung/making-strange, common objects or situations so that people become aware of the common-place and have a new experience - with a marketing message attached.
Illicit - It should feel edgy and exciting.
Targeted - as this form of marketing is propagated through viral channels, you are reaching your target market with a higher coverage than some conventional media.
Video - it is a high impact, easy to distribute, easy to share media. People are able share video through networks such as YouTube – Facebook – MySpace, with the number of views traceable for reporting.
Humour - funny or absurd works wonders.