Viral Marketing vs Guerilla Marketing

In 2007, the Boston Police were inundated with frightened phone calls claiming bombs had been found throughout the city.

The panic that ensued led to various dramatized news reports, frightened commuters, and an enormous backlash that led to the resignation of a prominent figure.

Al-Qaeda? Isis? Boko-Haram?

Cartoon Network.

Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network has a well-known subsidiary focusing on the 15-25 demographic called Adult Swim. One of their most famous programs is a surreal slice-of-life show called Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which was in the process of having a movie for theaters being promoted.

They used a series of Lite-Brite style depictions of the mooninites, snobbish characters of the show, giving the middle finger.

The intention was to get their demographic to take pictures and share on social media. Viral marketing is the process of getting your consumers to share your information for you, often with a funny and short vid or meme.

What they hadn't counted on was how people who didn't recognize the show, chiefly older generations, to respond to LED figures hidden in public areas.

The backlash was enormous, and the Executive Vice President of Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, resigned in response.

The lesson to take home here? Viral Marketing is a brilliant way to generate hype about something short-lived, like a film or limited-time product. But there are enormous risks that should always be weighed, and the more exotic and "outside the box" a viral campaign is, the more likely it will generate a backlash.

Always mete out viral material with traditional advertising as well, and if push comes to shove, stick with vines and dog videos or trending hashtags in lieu of physical artifacts that could be misconstrued.

There's a lot of overlap between Viral Marketing (and disastrous consequences as mentioned in my Viral Marketing post) and Guerilla Marketing. That's because Viral Marketing is a subset of the much broader Guerilla Marketing, named in the eponymous book Guerilla Marketing by Conrad Levinson, the Creative Director of my personal hero and fellow Leo, Leo Burnett. The former makes use of atypical campaigns to generate talk about a produce or service, getting it to spread by word of mouth throughout the community. So in that context, the Adult Swim snafu was a form of Guerilla Marketing.

The latter, however, constitutes many subsets, Viral being only one overused variation. One of my favorite examples was when Dominoes began paving roads, fixing potholes, and superimposing their logos on the repaired pavement. It was brilliant and unorthodox, which sums up what all good Guerilla Marketing should be.

Because it is high risk, high reward, this style of marketing is best used by smaller businesses or smaller satellites of larger businesses, where the backlash is smaller and the prospect of success can make or break that business.

Some cities have actually passed laws preventing these types of campaigns due to the possible consequences, but the vast majority of Guerrilla Marketing attempts have given their businesses far more attention (and subsequent sales) to discourage this trend from slowing down anytime soon.

The takeaway? It's lucrative to be innovative. It's profitable to think outside the box. But study every angle, and look for flaws in your technique to mitigate the risk. And before attempting anything unorthodox, ask yourself: "Are we doing this because it will work or because it seems cool?" If you answered the latter, consider going with a more traditional approach before you wind up on the front page of a big city newspaper for all the wrong reasons.