The Definitive Guerrilla Marketing Manual 2016 Edition€¦ · Feel free to Google "Guerrilla...

The Definitive Guerrilla Marketing Manual 2016 Edition by Sage Lewis in support of CMO SAGE: http://cmosage.com/

The Definitive Guerrilla Marketing Manual 2016 Edition Let's face it: when you don't have any money, but you need to get your message out, you need to get dirty.

The shit needs to get real. Real fast.

You don't have time to dick around with little pansyass moves.

Whether or not you eat next week or you actually give a shit about your cause depends totally on what you do right now.

That's why you are here. And that's what I'm going to give you.

What you are about to read is not politically correct. It is not pretty. It is not going to make you feel good. But if you follow the directions here, it's going to work.

I'm writing this because I'm inspired by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris France. (It's November 2015).

8 mother fuckers tore shit up.

120 people dead. 352 wounded.

Sage Lewis | [email protected] | 3303799000

http://cmosage.com/

mailto:[email protected]


Make no mistake. They are assholes and I'd kill them myself if they weren't already dead. ISIS is an apocalyptic anarchist shit bag group that wants everyone dead. FUCK THEM!

But. They were effective.

Terrorism is effective. It works time and time again for getting your attention.

The entire world is spinning up billions of dollars of military response because of 8 people.

In fact, it's not uncommon knowledge that we "never let a serious crisis go to waste." So, all the major militaries will be using this situation to their benefit as well.

This act is the pinnacle of guerrilla marketing.


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The terrorists are using it as brand building and the militaries of the world are using it to wedge their forces into other parts of the world and get more money for military operations.

9/11 was the pinnacle of guerrilla marketing of its time. It's so powerful I can show you one image and punch you in the gut. Here you go:

A small group with no resources wants to be heard. And heard they were.

I'm not condoning them in any way. But what I am telling you is to learn from them.


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Always learn from your enemies.

Terrorists have a lot to teach us.

Every time some asshole person or group makes the news, stop and study them.

● How did they get national coverage? ● What makes them worthy of our attention? ● How do they make us feel so much?

Feel free to Google "Guerrilla Marketing Tactics". But they aren't going to really help you.

The problem with all those cutesy little ideas is that they have no soul and they are over played.

If you really want to study guerrilla marketing you'd do much better to study the tactics of ISIS.

Actually, if you want a blue print for how to run a bootstrapped startup read this article:

This Is Scary — Islamic State’s Tactics Are Really Similar to Nazi Germany’s — War Is Boring — Medium

What I'm telling you to do is study the news.

All of the news is put in front of you by guerrilla marketing masters. God, himself, occasionally gets in game with tsunamis and earth quakes.


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https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-is-scary-islamic-state-s-tactics-are-really-similar-to-nazi-germany-be13d868b7b0

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-is-scary-islamic-state-s-tactics-are-really-similar-to-nazi-germany-be13d868b7b0



Look at the top stories of all time from this site: The 60 Biggest News Moments of All Time Today's News: Our Take | TVGuide.com

● John F. Kennedy assassination (1963) ● Moon landing (1969) ● September 11 attacks (2001) ● President Nixon's resignation (1974) ● Gulf War (1991) ● O.J. Simpson trial (1995) ● Challenger explosion (1986) ● Rescue of Baby Jessica (1987) ● Electionnight debacle (2000) ● Death of Osama bin Laden (2011)

Every one of these invokes deep emotions.

● Joy ● Pride ● Horror ● Sadness

And then there are countless stories that the news knows they can just dial in:

● Pretty, young, white woman is raped and murdered while out walking alone.

● Teens shoot up high school. ● Westboro Baptist Church hates fags and pickets a military funeral.

These all create massive waves of strong emotions of fear and sadness and anger.


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http://www.tvguide.com/news/60-biggest-news-moments-all-time-1071599/

http://www.tvguide.com/news/60-biggest-news-moments-all-time-1071599/



But what I can tell you is, that's not all it is.

If these things happened constantly they wouldn't make the news.

37,000 people will die in car accidents this year just in the U.S. Another 2.35 million will be injured or disabled. 1,600 of these deaths are children under 15 years old.

But look at school shootings.

It's almost impossible to find the total number of deaths in school shootings. They like to hide that number. They'll tell you the total number of school shootings that have occurred. But not the total number of deaths.

Why won't they tell you the total number of deaths? Because it would expose their guerrilla marketing secret weapon.

According to this Wikipedia post, since 2010 to present the total number of deaths in school shootings is 100.

100 kids have been killed in school shootings in the last 5 years. And you are outraged.

1600 kids under the age of 15 died in a car accident, just in the U.S. this year and you don't care.

Why?

It's the element of surprise.


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http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#2010-2019



Terrorism is effective because it is surprising. Car accident deaths are expected.

Terrorism works better when it happens rarely.

If it happened all the time we'd get used to it.

This is what we must learn from asshole terrorists: Guerrilla Marketing must be surprising.

It needs to come out of nowhere. It needs to catch people off guard.

So, you can't be the company that spray paints your logo everywhere, all the time. You then just become annoying.

You never want to be annoying. You want to loved or hated.

For guerrilla marketing to work you always need to be coming at people from different directions.

Do you remember the Beltway Sniper?


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Ten people were killed and three other victims were critically injured in several locations throughout the Washington, D.C.


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This is Bushmaster XM15 rifle used by Muhammad and Malvo during their attacks. It was fitted with an EOTechholographic weapon sight, a bipod, and a 20roundSTANAG magazine at the time of their capture.

During the period of the attacks in the D.C. area, the North American media devoted enormous amounts of air time and newspaper space to each new attack. By the middle of October 2002, all news television networks provided live coverage of the aftermath of each attack, with the coverage often lasting for hours at a time.

Not only were people terrified but they were caught off guard.

We had never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

But it was just 10 people.

2,500 Lefthanders are killed EACH YEAR using righthanded products.

And that's the problem with a lot of these articles on Guerrilla Marketing.


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http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/2500-lefthanders-killed-using-right-handed-products.html#sthash.uYBOXT6g.dpbs



If you've heard of it being done, and you do it, you're just a copycat. That's never as powerful as being the original.

Being original and fresh is the most important aspect to guerrilla marketing. So, admiring other people's guerrilla marketing should only be a jumping off point. It should never be the complete map.

In Akron, we had a guy who was pooping in and on people's cars. 19 of them since 2012.

It's just so out there and bizarre.


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That's guerrilla marketing.

You do things that are strange or funny or angry or sad. But mostly different and surprising.

Everybody has seen the abortion crosses.

It's done. It's over. It's annoying for anyone that isn't part of the group of people that already hates abortions.

What's a lot fresher is people vandalizing the crosses like what was done to the Clarion Students for Life Cemetery of the Innocents

The vandals broke the crosses, stuffed them in trash cans and wrote on some of them: “would you support if this life was gay?”


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http://www.lifenews.com/2015/04/13/abortion-activists-vandalize-pro-life-cross-display-at-clarion-university-of-pennsylvania/




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Vandalizing the crosses is news. Putting up the crosses is not news.

Do you get it?

Shock and awe. That's what you need.

(Incidentally, don't bother vandalizing the crosses now. It too is over and done.)

Have I reset your understanding of what Guerrilla Marketing is? Are you in the mental space of understanding why something works versus why something doesn't work?

37,000 vehicle deaths is not news. 100 school shooting deaths is news. Why? Because school shootings come out of nowhere. There is no rhyme or reason. It is chaos. It is anarchy. It puts the observer on tilt. It defies all sense of order.

That's guerrilla marketing. Chaos. Randomness. Anarchy.

This is The Definitive Guerrilla Marketing Manual.

It will grow and evolve over time. You are welcome to discuss your tests with Guerrilla Marketing in the comments below.

You should be aware that Guerrilla Marketing, by nature, must change and evolve. Doing the same thing turns Guerrilla Marketing into traditional marketing.


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A flash mob singing in the middle of a city is no longer Guerrilla Marketing. It's expected.

The Red Coats in the Revolutionary War hated the tactics of American guerrillas. But by Vietnam that was just how everybody fought.


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If you want to be a great guerrilla marketer you have to adapt.

What follows is how to build an effective Guerrilla Marketing Strategy.

This is not for the faint of heart.

This is out there shit. This is taking your comfort zone and molesting it. You have to be hungry if you want to do this stuff.

Otherwise, keep writing your blog posts. Keep posting boring tripe on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Just stop reading now.

But, if your stomach is growling because you are hungry, your rent is way past due. Your water has been turned off. Or if you are just sick and tired of the status quo and you want change NOW! What follows is for you...


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STEP 1: FREE YOUR MIND

I need you to get a piece paper and quickly write down the 10 things you could do to get a lot of attention right away. Here's my list:

● Set myself on fire. ● Murder someone ● Run through town naked ● Publicly make fun of a direct competitor and all the people that work there ● Have a naked video broadcast ● Interview drug addicts on a podcast ● Figure out how to house the homeless ● Become homeless ● Go to Peru and go on a psychedelic Ayahuasca retreat and document the

whole thing ● Become a psychedelic drug expert ● Sell all my belongings and camp across the country with my family and

document the whole thing.

So that's the real list. I made it off the top of my head. These are the most extreme things I could think of to raise awareness of me and my business.

The first two, while definitely effective, would not work because I'd either be dead or in jail.

Almost all the others I don't have the balls to do. I'm either too lazy or too chicken.

All except one: "Figure out how to house the homeless."


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That's one that really interests me.

But hold on to that thought.

Let's make a second list. Let's make a list of "clever" ideas. These will not be nearly as magnetic. But they could do just enough to grab someone's attention.

To help you, I have an Advertising board I update on Pinterest.

Follow Sage's board Advertising on Pinterest.

There are some pretty good ads in there. They aren't ISIS terrorist good. But they are decent.

These people might think these are Guerrilla Marketing tactics. But they really aren't. They are just using traditional marketing methods with a clever message, for the most part.

This list will be harder. But I'd like you to try making a list of clever marketing strategies within the confines of traditional marketing.

Here are some ideas I had for me:

● Chalk my Web address and clever messages through out my city ● Hold a charity event at my office ● Give away marketing services to a local nonprofit and document the

process ● Give 10% of my service fee to a charity of my client's choosing. ● Host a free clinic to help new businesses get online ● Offer free marketing consulting on Blab.im


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https://www.pinterest.com/sagerock/advertising/



Do you see how much more lame the second list is?

Yeah. I'd be willing to do any of those things. But what's the return on investment going to be?

If I, uglyoldwhiteman me, did a naked Web marketing show I guarantee it would create WAY more buzz than anything in the second list.

And just for the record, blogging, making a video, making a podcast, those are all possibly good ideas. But they are far too mainstream to be considered guerrilla marketing. That's not what we're talking about here.

You may be able to use those tools for a guerrilla marketing campaign. But, by themselves, they aren't guerrilla marketing any more.

If you make those two lists and you aren't willing to do anything on them you are done. Guerrilla marketing isn't for you.

If you need more ideas, give this article a read: Guerrilla marketing Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Actually, read it whether you need good ideas or not. It does a good job of highlighting different styles of guerrilla marketing.

STEP 2: ASK FOR FORGIVENESS NOT PERMISSION

Guerrilla marketing always must come out of nowhere. It has to catch people off guard.


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing



If you start asking for permission from the police or the main event's organizers or the person's building you've infiltrated, you will always be shut down.

The best guerrilla marketing is going to produce scorn and ridicule by some.

In fact, the best guerrilla marketing should be almost 5050.

That means that 50% of people will hate it and 50% will love it. That's the holy grail of guerrilla marketing optimization.

Do you remember ChickfilA's samesex marriage controversy? It was Guerrilla Marketing gold:

ChickfilA samesex marriage controversy Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On June 16, 2012, while on the syndicated radio talk show, The Ken

Coleman Show, ChickfilA president and chief operating officer (COO)

Dan Cathy stated: I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation

when we shake our fist at Him and say, "We know better than you as to

what constitutes a marriage". I pray God's mercy on our generation that

has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity

to define what marriage is about.[22][23][24]

Sales soared following the controversy. Sales increased "12 percent, to $4.6 billion, in 2012.


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controversy



It was perfect!

Yes. I think Dan Cathy is an ignorant asshole. But he's also, maybe unknowingly, a guerrilla marketing genius.


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STEP 3: MAP THE PLAN

Once you have decided on the strategy you need to map out how you are going to carry out your Guerrilla Marketing tactics.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Mind Mapping.

Mind maps allow you to easily create a flow of ideas and steps that you can then follow easily.

Right now I'm using Coggle.

Mind maps can be as simple or complex as you want.

People are sometimes so heavily into Mind maps that they become like art.


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https://coggle.it/



STEP 4: WORK THE PLAN

The biggest secret to carrying out a guerrilla marketing plan is to actually do the plan.

The more complicated and risky your plan, the less likely it is that you will see it all the way through.

There are many ways you can stay productive. There are countless productivity tools and concepts.


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But I'm going to recommend one productivity strategy in particular here: The Seinfeld Productivity Secret.

This is how it works:

Get a big wall calendar that has the entire year on one page.

Each day that you work on your guerrilla marketing plan you put a big red X over that day.

Eventually, you'll have a chain.

The only job you have is to not break the chain.

Do something for your Guerrilla Marketing strategy every single day.

If you get done with one strategy start another strategy immediately.

Keep it fresh. Keep it new.

Shock and awe.

STEP 5: MEASURE THE RESULTS

You are going to have to figure out how your guerrilla marketing is working.

● Did it actually drive awareness? ● Did it piss off no more than 50% of people? ● Did it not piss off anyone? (that's almost an instant fail)


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http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret

http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret



● Did you get coverage from the traditional media or on social media? ● Did you get anyone asking about what you are selling? (This shouldn't be

the only measure of success. It takes time to get people to buy.)

You also want to take measure of yourself.

● Did you hate the process? ● Was it too embarrassing for your taste? ● Would you rather get a real job than do this shit again?

If you loved it then you might just be a guerrilla marketing master.

If you like to mix it up you might actually want to offer out your services.

Most people can't hang with real guerrilla marketing. It's simply too painful.

CONCLUSION

Guerrilla marketing is the outer edge.

It's scary. It's painful.

You might end up in jail. You might end up in the hospital.

But that's how you know you're doing it right.


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SteveO is possibly the greatest Guerrilla Marketer alive today.

He is most famous for his performance stunts on Jackass.

He is a selfadmitted attention whore. He will do anything (and I mean anything) to get attention.

He recently was on the Joe Rogan podcast: SteveO. If you like SteveO it's worth listening to. Somehow, he hasn't incurred too much brain trauma that he isn't funny or insightful.

You have to be willing to be open to all things.


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http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/steve-o



If you have boundaries of things like being embarrassed, not wanting to break the rules or the law or not wanting to make waves... then guerrilla marketing isn't for you.

That's ok. There are other ways to get attention. But all other ways will be slower and/or more expensive.

If your business is dying and you want to keep it alive then get naked, get arrested, get yelled at.

You need to get going.

EXAMPLES

I'll be adding examples of Guerrilla Marketing tactics here. But keep in mind, in my opinion, if it's already been done it is no longer a pure Guerrilla Marketing tactic. The power of its surprise has been lessened. It won't slap the user in the face as hard as it could.

Just the same, guerrilla marketing examples might give you an idea of what you could do.

Please feel free to link to and share other guerrilla marketing examples in the comments.

Keep in mind that we aren't trying to find clever ads. We are trying to find disruptive ads.


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A well done guerrilla marketing tactic should sucker punch you square in the face. It needs to come out of nowhere.

Here's a start of some guerrilla marketing tactics I've found recently:

Bloomingdale's “Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.”

This caused a ton of outrage in the social media realm and therefore got a lot of publicity in many places. I found out about it here: Why the Bloomingdale's Ad Was an Inexcusable Marketing Mistake

Bloomingdale's quickly apologized and took it down.


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http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252908

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252908



I never believe these things are a mistake. They knew exactly what they were doing. You see these all the time.

And then Bloomingdale's can say, "Silly us. We didn't think about the idea that this might mean someone would want to rape that poor, dear girl."

What the hell else could it mean? There isn't any other meaning to the ad.

Vagina Mask Woman

So here's the story: Ads for Thinx, a company that makes underwear for women while they are on their periods were denied because MTA chairman Thomas Prendergast said the ads "offended" him.


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http://www.shethinx.com/

http://www.amny.com/transit/thinx-period-underwear-subway-ads-offended-me-mta-chief-says-1.11022451



New Yorker Yeni Sleidi dressed in a vagina mask and posted fliers and boxes of tampons in the NYC subways.

This is an example flyer:

"I didn't do this to promote [Thinx] in any way. I did it to combat shame, and to provide a tampon for anyone who ends up needing one while commuting," said Sleidi.

If found this here:

Woman in a vagina mask hands out tampons to protest subway shaming


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http://mashable.com/2015/10/30/tampons-nyc-subway/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial#SeILWccD25q8



Protesters in front of Ben and Jerry’s in Burlington, Vt. in 1999 voiced their opposition to Unilever’s planned acquisition of the ice cream company.

A Scorecard for Companies With a Conscience The New York Times

“Mr Putin, tear down this law!”


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http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/a-scorecard-for-companies-with-a-conscience/?_r=0



On its German facebook site, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s has taken a stance against the Russian law against gay “propaganda

From here: Ben & Jerry's opposes antigay russian law en.queer.de

Little Baby's Ice Cream

This pretty much says it all:


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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151757445398820&set=a.327807668819.147020.241036373819&type=1

http://en.queer.de/2013/08/23/ben-jerrys-opposes-anti-gay-russian-law/

http://www.littlebabysicecream.com/




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The Definitive Guerrilla Marketing Manual 2016 Edition€¦ · Feel free to Google "Guerrilla...

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