Dennis Norman Musings

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

Wikipedia defines “Guerrilla Marketing” as:

The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional; potentially interactive; and consumers are targeted in unexpected places.The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral 

Being a life-long entrepreneur and, often the “underdog” in the race, I have had to rely on guerrilla marketing tactics to promote myself and my businesses.  So, “having been there, done that”, I’m always impressed when I see good guerrilla marketing in action. 

Over the weekend I ran across a blog that highlighted, not only a great example of a business that acted upon a situation that was literally the textbook (well, wikipedia) example of a guerrilla marketing opportunity, but the story also contained a great example of another business that blew it and couldn’t have wasted the opportunity more.
I’m referring to a blog called DoctorWifeMom and the post was titled “A Tale of Two Managers”.  This was my first time to the site and while it appears to be a political blog of sorts.  In the header is the following statement;

“Blogging about life as a woman who wears many hats and lives in the red flyover states where we cling to our bibles and our guns and rely on hard work and ingenuity to make it”

However it was at this site I found a great example of guerrilla marketing.

Carolyn, the blogs author, wrote about a political rally she attended in St. Louis, Missouri which brought out a couple of thousand people.  the rally was held on, what sounds like, a busy corner with a shopping center across the street from the rally.  Being the best source of parking it appears many of the rally attendees chose to parking on the shopping center lot although the lot no doubt had signs posted that parking was for patrons of the shopping centers stores only.  Clearly some of the attendees, including Carolyn, did make a purchase from a business  in the center, but many did not. 

In the story there were managers of two businesses located in the shopping center that looked out onto the parking lot, saw all the “illegal parkers” as well as the crowd of people out front and took action.  One person responding was a manager of a major local grocery chain that does over $2 billion of sales in the St. Louis area a year (no doubt many of the rally attendees are customers) and his response was apparently not nice and was more combative than friendly.  The other response was from a manager of another business in the center; one Kyle Gilbertson, manager of Mr. Goodcents Subs and Pastas who took a different approach; he was friendly and nice to the 2,000 unexpected “guests” out front and had employees hand out coupons, food samples and so forth.  No doubt his sales that day were way above normal.  You gotta love it.  Carolyn’s story is much more detailed and complete and I would invite you to check it out by clicking here.