What Is Guerrilla Marketing
by John Botscharow
What is guerrilla marketing and how is it different from other
types of marketing?
To answer that let's first define what a guerrilla is. The best
answer I've found comes from Guy Kawasaki
(http://www.garage.com), former "evangelist" for Apple
Computers. In his book How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Guy
defines "guerrilla companies" as "small, non-mainstream
companies...[who] survive by hitting and running ...They are
offence-minded because they have nothing to defend.
Decision-making is in the trenches, and they succeed because of
their perseverance."
Let's look at this definition in details. Guerrillas are small,
non-mainstream companies. The only way for a small company to
survive in the marketplace is by guerrilla tactics, hitting and
running. Most of us could not survive in the ring against
companies like Microsoft or Yahoo if we took them on head to
head. we would be crushed. But the advantage of being a
guerrilla is you hit and run. A constant running battle. But
why would we want to attack such a large opponent like Microsoft
or Yahoo or just about every Internet Service Provider as I have
done with e-Crucible (http://freedom-is-not-free.org)?
Because one of the defining characteristics of guerrilla
marketers is that we make mountains out of molehills. Kawasaki
advises any guerrilla marketer to pick an opponent that you can
make into a cause. But it has to be a cause you can believe in
and fight for sincerely. One you can evangelize for.
In my case I made a mountain out of a molehill by taking a
small, insignificant event - my ISP shutting me down for a few
spam complaints that were the result of an honest mistake made
by a couple of guys who were new to Internet marketing - and
made it a cause - the unfair treatment of people accused of
spamming. ISPs do not investigate spam complaints as a rule.
They figure where there's smoke there's fire. You are guilty
without any chance of proving yourself innocent. But that's a
whole different soap box and we'll save that for another day.
And before you all think this was a callous and calculating move
on my part, you are wrong. I did this because I truly believe in
the cause, but it also makes marketing sense. My mountain is the
ISP industry in the United States. Even if the mountain falls on
me, I still come out a winner because I attacked the mountain.
That's what Guy Kawasaki did when he was chief evangelist for
Apple's MacIntosh. At that point, the only viable PC operating
system was MS DOS. When Apple came out with the Mac, they
introduced the first icon-based, user-friendly interface
operating system. They were a little upstart that took on
Microsoft, who was already the computer giant it is today.
Believe it or not, it was that little upstart and the guerrilla
marketing campaign that turned Mac users into evangelists for
Mac, that forced Bill Gates to develop the Windows operating
system. And even though Mac "lost" the battle with Microsoft
(the Mac has not replaced the Windows PC), there are still a lot
of devoted mac users who would "rather fight than switch." My
best friend back in Chicago is one of them. He has been a
devoted Mac user for years and is constantly trying to convert
me (and with my experiences with Windows 98, I'm giving it
serious thought).
I honestly believe that the way that Microsoft "crushed" the Mac
was the start of MS's decline in the eyes of the American
public. We tend to root for the underdog. Microsoft came across
as a big bully! The chickens are now coming home to roost.
The reason that things turned out that way in the battle between
Microsoft and Apple was because Microsoft was the entrenched
industry standard. They had a product (MS DOS) and a reputation
to defend. Apple was a nobody. They had a few earlier computer
models that were on the market, which, by their own admission,
were not very good and had made no great inroads into the
market. They had nothing to defend. They could afford to lose!
To be a guerrilla you have to be able to afford to lose!!! But
if you are going to lose, make sure you lose to somebody so much
bigger than you that you win!
John Botscharow is editor of the Web Guerrilla Journal and the R Market Daily. He is also one of the partners in 3 R Marketing. Visit them at http://www.3r-marketing.com and subscribe to one or more of their marketing newsletters.
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