In partnership with
Table of Contents
Curated Careers
Trends and Tidbits:
WTH is Guerilla Marketing? Crazy ideas that went viral
Top 100 AI courses for marketing, product, business, etc.
Native ads vs Banner ads
AI Arena:
Top AI tools of the week
Interesting reads for the week
If this was forwarded to you, consider joining our community through this link.
Learn AI in 5 Minutes a Day
AI Tool Report is one of the fastest-growing and most respected newsletters in the world, with over 550,000 readers from companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and more.
Our research team spends hundreds of hours a week summarizing the latest news, and finding you the best opportunities to save time and earn more using AI.
💼 Curated Careers 💼
B2B SaaS Copywriter at Spear Growth
📍 Full-time, Remote (India)💸 INR 4.8 - 6.24 LPA
⚒️ Brief: Copy creation for ad, email workflow, and landing page, client research, and maintaining relations.
💎 Trendy Tidbits 💎
➡️ WTH is Guerilla Marketing?
Last month this quick-commerce brand from India did something crazy!
It was just another summer morning when I woke up.🌅
Like any other day, I picked up the daily newspaper and started skimming.
On the first page of it, Swiggy-instamart had one ad.
It said “ Read this ad with your nose”
When I did. I found it smelled like mangoes.
Ya! It was a mango ad that actually literally smelled like mangoes 🤤
A mango-scented front page on the Times of India.
Results? It skyrocketed their sales for that day to a significantly higher than average📈📈
And the buzz on social media was a pretty plus.
You smelled the ad, you talked about it. Suddenly, you're part of a marketing campaign! And that is the magic of guerrilla marketing -
Unexpected, unconventional, and memorable. 💭
➡️Why Guerrilla Marketing?
Conventional ads are sometimes (boring and) exhausting. And I say that not just from the viewer’s perspective, but also for us marketers! It’s just tiring redundant work 😩
Because consumers are immune to ads. The so-called “Ad Fatigue”.
That’s why they don’t convert so easily.
But, here comes the Gorilla! Ahem, sorry, Guerrilla.
To start with, let’s clear some fog on the term.
‘Guerrilla’ comes from the Spanish word "Guerra" meaning "war" and
the suffix "-illa" indicates a small scale.
It means a small group taking on a large force (with an unusual approach).
From a marketing perspective ‘guerrilla marketing’ refers to innovative, low-cost marketing strategies aimed at obtaining maximum exposure with minimal resources.
It is all about a creative-campaign to surprise a targetted audience in public places or on the internet.
But why? Well, mostly, to put the word-of-mouth at work!
Giphy
The next step is to make it work for you as well.
First, we’ll look at some more examples from the past. Because it is an experimental marketing tactic: The more ideas you know, the more doors of creativity you unlock.
To start with,
You may have heard of some of the stunts by big brands like…
Tesla sent one of its roadsters to space that you can know the live location of by clicking on the link. And Redbull helped a skydiver freefall from a height of 127,852 feet. Similarly, many brands love to surprise their audience and keep them watching their next weird move. So, let the rally begin.
➡️Some Crazy Guerrilla Campaigns
1) Picture this:
New year has rolled in and you’re walking on the roads of London & encounter some mysterious posters about a missing alpaca, monkey, and reindeer.
Makes you sad, doesn’t it?
Here’s the twist — these animals weren't actually missing. 🐐
It was just a clever act by the adventure travel brand.
Curious citizens, like you and I, eager to help locate…
- Jeremy the Alpaca
- Mike the Monkey and
- Rupert the Reindeer
did scan the QR codes on these unbranded posters.
But, to their surprise, instead of animal rescue info, they found discount codes for WeRoad’s 2023 travel itineraries 🤐
This spread like wildfire across social media.
Here’s another one…
2) Nivea’s pooping seagull 💩
Imagine (or, don’t, because it doesn’t sound very tasteful) a seagull drone that poops sunscreen. Yeah, you heard it right.
A German agency called Jung von Matt did this crazy campaign where they designed a drone that looked like a seagull. And that crazy thing went flying around the beach & pooped sunscreen on children who hesitated to apply themselves.
Nivea suddenly made headlines on daily news media and expectedly got a lot of attention.
3) Burger King’s prank on McDonald’s
During Halloween (2016) a Burger King location in Queens, NY was dressed as the ghost of McDonald’s. Then they wrote this on the huge costume…
“Booooo! Just kidding, we still flame-grill our burgers, Happy Halloween!🎃”
4) Paramount’s attention-seeking trick
Look at what Paramount did (during the MLB games) to promote their movie ‘Smile’.
And the last one…
5) Dorito’s clever attention-grabber
So, to conclude, here’s how you should think of Guerrilla marketing activities…
➡️Elements of a low-budget Guerrilla
1) Should be inexpensive.
2) Should be fun.
3) Plan the message and align your brand positioning.
4) Shouldn’t be illegal, though striking some controversy is fine.
5) Should be able to measure campaign results.
And that’s a wrap on guerilla marketing 🏁
You can also use your guerrilla as part of your omnichannel marketing strategy. I have the simplest explanation of omnichannel marketing in this newsletter.
In other thoughts…
When native ads backfire — Source Ariyh
In a series of experiments and analysis of 212k ad campaigns across 13 thousand websites (along with field and lab tests) researchers found that:
Across a variety of categories (clothing, home furnishings, and cosmetics), people were 42% more likely to click on a native ad compared to a banner ad.
In a separate field experiment, covering 969 unique website visits, people were 24.1% more likely to bounce when directed to a page from a native (vs a banner) ad.
The two types of ads resulted in similar net visits (170 vs. 207), but the average cost per engaged visit was 16% higher for native ads.
When shown either a native or banner ad, people felt 19.6% more annoyed by the native ad. This annoyance led to increased bounce rates and lower purchase intentions.
It is a little counter-intuitive, you say? Here’s why it happens —
🧠 Reason: Native ads blend seamlessly with website content, making us more likely to engage with them, unlike traditional banner ads which we often ignore due to their blatant appearance. However, when we unknowingly click on a native ad and are redirected to an advertiser's page, it leaves us feeling misled.
We recently created and published…
A list of 100+ AI courses for everyone.
If you would like to access it for free — just reply to this email with “AI”.
Learn AI in 5 Minutes a Day
AI Tool Report is one of the fastest-growing and most respected newsletters in the world, with over 550,000 readers from companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and more.
Our research team spends hundreds of hours a week summarizing the latest news, and finding you the best opportunities to save time and earn more using AI.
🤖 AI Arena 🤖
Chat GPT-4o mini → ChatGPT launches its cost-effective model.
Zixflow → Automate WhatsApp, SMS, email
AutoAE → Easiest way to make viral hooks like top creators
Flow Studio → Convert Text to a Movie
🧠Interesting reads🧠
🔗 15 Marketing books to read → Link
🔗 39 Free and creative marketing ideas for July → Link
🔗 14 in-demand digital marketing skills → Link
Did you enjoy this issue?
Thanks,
Deep Kakkad, your marketer friend.
