Guerrilla Marketing and Video Marketing

Guerrilla marketing can be defined as the set of unconventional tactics used to achieve conventional goals (above all: profit) with small budgets. Guerrilla marketing needs only three things: “time, energy, imagination.” But how to integrate this type of marketing into a broader digital marketing strategy? Is it possible to make guerrilla marketing coexist with video marketing?

Guerrilla marketing was born in a physical, analog, intensely relational reality, but over the years it has managed, as we have seen, to adapt to the changing world, taking advantage of its technological resources, and succeeding in carving out important spaces for itself, both online and offline.

In a good guerrilla marketing strategy, the creative idea frees up “unusual” sensory inputs through carefully designed “disruptive” actions, places them at the center of the trajectories of the target audience: in public places, on networked platforms or social networks.

Since then, content continues to live its own life, media, multimedia and, above all, digital: on social networks, blogs, online magazines, corporate sites, sharing platforms, through different forms of participation such as reviews, comments, likes, posts, inevitably impacting SEO as well.

Guerrilla marketing is thus realized within a more extensive content marketing plan: it contributes to the layering of the brand’s collective memory along with other tools. Its advertising communication allows people to experience the brand in a concrete, largely participatory dimension. At the center of this multifaceted plan, video constitutes a pivotal element, employed by guerrilla actions to fulfill multiple functions.

Depending on the need, video can be a: curiosity activator, trailer, storyteller, unveiler, tool to explain complex concepts in a simple way, avatar, alter ego, nemesis, or helper. In any case, video represents a powerful mode of engagement.

Guerrilla marketing requires an effort, even minimal, of participation: it “happens,” “intervenes,” “imposes itself” at times when the consumer’s advertising consciousness is not active. It interrupts the flow of his daily actions, imposes an awareness, invites an interaction that is meaningful and contributes to redefine, in a precise direction, the perception of the brand: it symbolically lays the first brick to build a solid brand awareness.

For this reason, it’s located at the birth of a general trend toward engagement that is now unfolding in full force, with current content video marketing strategies exhibiting similar distinctive traits: communication, engagement, and interaction.

According to figures provided by a Wyzowl report:

• 96% of people say they watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service;
• 79% of people say that a brand’s video convinced them to buy a software or application;
• 68% of people say they would prefer to watch a short video to learn about a new product or service.

Video is an extremely popular learning tool, far more popular than infographics, presentations, and pitches (each garnering 4% of preferences), text articles (preferred by 15% of respondents), manuals, and e-books (chosen by 3%).

These data suggest some conclusions: video content facilitates and multiplies opportunities for interaction. They allow users to connect with them in an increasingly simple and immediate way. Brands, on the other hand, are increasingly choosing to invite their customers into their stories, calling them to express themselves about products and values.

Also lending further force to this statement is “Forbes, which writes that “Building brand awareness and successfully interacting with consumers is a crucial part of doing business today. Consumers prefer and consequently expect a personalized experience.” And below, talking about the need for audiences to be part of brand narratives, “The ability to interact with audiences (i.e., to make audiences part of the brand story) will have a huge impact.”

It’s true, then, that guerrilla marketing and video marketing have much in common: the ability to capture attention and build brand awareness, visibility that increases over time, the quest for engagement, and a distinct narrative dimension.

They are also different: while the former seeks the “local” breaking of an equilibrium, a visibility that is at least initially limited to a circumscribed environment, video is, from the outset, open to an expanded distribution. They are not alternative or competing tools: to maximize each other’s distinctive qualities they must coexist within the same communication system, establishing interesting and as yet unexplored synergies between them.

For both guerrilla marketing and video, the future is personalization. A recent Gartner study shows that offering “bespoke help” to consumers translates into an opportunity for brands to attribute tangible and meaningful value to consumers in the forms and features they seek. Those who do not engage in this direction risk losing 38% of their customers.

We have mentioned the danger of a progressive depowering of the creative charge of guerrilla marketing. To revitalize it, the way forward could be through an increasing synergy with videos, animated, filmed, however personalized. The Babelee platform provides all the tools necessary to operationalize this suggestive hypothesis, starting with our personalized videos, which help you write engaging stories to enrich your customers’ experience.