(Check out our complete collection of Subversive Marketing and Culture Jamming.)
Guerilla marketing is often a risky business, skirting the edge of ethical (or even legal) acceptability. Some guerilla marketers who have crossed the line have caused everything from Olympic belly-flops to city-wide bomb scares and have been punished with anything from modest jail time to millions of dollars in fines. All the same, some of these are probably (secretly) considered successes because subsequent media attention to the debacles probably raised more awareness than the guerilla campaigns alone ever could have. Some guerilla marketing is even done to support good causes though much of it is created to line the pockets of giant corporations. Know of other great examples of guerilla marketing gone wrong? Be sure to list them below!
The Olympics aren’t games to be toyed with apparently, as one tutu-wearing prankster learned the hard way. In an effort to guerilla market an online gaming site a Canadian man leapt into an Olympic pool at the 2004 Athens games. He was convicted of various counts of trespassing and creating a disturbance and was sentenced to multiple months in a Greek prison but then released with a fine of just a few hundred dollars. Some divers were apparently put off by the intervention and subsequently failed to complete their dives.
The Microsoft Zune arguably has more haters than fans, apparently including some police officers in Austin, Texas. A person postering guerilla advertisements for the Zune was detained and handcuffed by authorities at SXSW last year. According to one eyewitness the police were overheard saying something like “We’ll have none of your advertising for your DRM’d crippleware’d crappy MP3 player littering our town.” Now that is an interesting reason to state for arrest if ever there was one.
There are many fans of the new movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall - unfortunately, most women named Sarah Marshall aren’t among them. Guerilla-style scrawled ads posted around the country have featured disparaging phrases like “You Suck Sarah Marshall” leading up to the film’s release. Perhaps it never occurred to the guerilla marketers behind these campaigns that there are, in fact, many real-life women with that name. Responses have ranged from frustration to raging retaliation (with comparable “You Suck” signs aimed at the film’s director). The lucky woman, however, who owns SarahMarshall.com was relatively pleased with the tens of thousands of visitors her website received.
We’ve all heard of subtle guerilla marketing campaigns aimed at mentioning products casually so that passers-by will overhear a name-drop and it should be no surprise that this kind of marketing has found its way online as well. Nvidia is one of a number of companies that has been accused of seeding online forums with fake-fan support for their products. Of course, when the truth comes out real forum users are often none-too-pleased with the deception and the lame excuses provided by the marketers or companies accused.
Of course, no discussion of guerilla marketing gone wrong could possibly be complete without the 2007 Boston bomb scare. A number of LED signs designed to promote the television program Aqua Teen Hunger Force were mistakenly identified as explosive devices. At the time, these cute little blinking cartoon figures probably seemed like a brilliant way to raise curiosity. In retrospect, in this post-911 world installing a series of complex wire-filled devices with their own power sources on public structural elements like bridge supports was probably a tremendously terrible idea. Worse yet, the marketing company and device designers failed to notify the police of the devices’ true purpose even after learnings that they were being treated as bombs by authorities. Though no jail sentences resulted from the incident Turner Broadcasting paid millions of dollars to city police and Homeland Security to resolve the matter.
Next: Dramatic Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns
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59 Comments
May 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Hadn’t heard of the olympic diver or the sarah marshall, if you visit sarahmarshall.com apparently she’s got a huge chunk of visitors. I can imagine it being a bit insulting if you stumbled across a giant sign that looked addressed to you telling you to go to the hell - since their’s no website or any marking showing it as an ad for a movie - your head would be racing with thoughts.
If it was me I’d probably be trying to pry the sign down, and trying to figure out who who hated me enough to put that up.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
The Boston scare proves that government is out of touch completely with the people.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:52 am
Viral marketing, not guerilla.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:59 am
The Boston bomb scare couldn’t have gone better for Adult Swim. The higher ups at Cartoon Network were horrified, but the AS guys were thrilled. They got days of free press for their upcoming Aqua Teen movie and were seen as little guys sticking it to The Man - which the kids just love.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Judd Apatow didn’t direct Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he produced it. Nicholas Stoller directed it.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:18 am
But the Boston campaign could have taken into account current security climate in the US before setting up a bunch of light brights. Could have at least notified the authorities of such a campaign was going to be used.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Forgot to mention this. The Boston bomb scare is actually pretty brilliant marketing. Look how much exposure they got on the news for free! That’s much better than paying for ad time.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:45 am
The Boston scare only helped reinforce what the Rag-heads already know; thanks to our own government they won.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:53 am
The Sarah Marshal posters all over Toronto’s subway system all have the movies website at the bottom. The main concern is that that’s ALL it says, it the address. You can actually spot it in the above pictures.
Anyway that’s my buzzkill for the day.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am
TV Spy, what do you mean? I see http://www.ihatesarahmarshall.com and the R-rating at the bottom of those posters.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I loved when Boston whined that the Marketing group made them look stupid, think they did that all on their own. Especially since the signs where in several other major cities and not one other city whined about it
May 7th, 2008 at 9:09 am
The real Sarah Marshall in the blazer has a great look. She could play Jennifer Anniston’s sister.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Theres no such thing as ‘bad’ publicity.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:02 am
The Boston bomb scare just showed how stupid the US is being about this supposed terrorist threat. Even if the continuing threat is real is it worth it to lose all those personal freedoms that have disappeared, lock down airports to the point where people will not go to the US and to destroy your constitution all in the name of what?
You have rentacops running the airports and abusing their powers. You have cops running amuck and blaming the problems on terrorists. What a great built in excuse.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:02 am
I think you’re wrong about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force light-bright scare. They made themselves legends among their existing fan base and the national publicity they received must have outstripped their expectations by a couple orders of magnitude. At the same time, they mocked the post-9/11 climate of fear, making them relevant social commentators even though they didn’t do it on purpose.
The ATHF campaign must have been a success.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am
“Look how much exposure they got on the news for free! That’s much better than paying for ad time.”
Yea! Except for the millions they had to pay in fines, it was totally free.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:41 am
if anyone thinks that the AS crew is merely “lucky” that they got that much attetion your probably wrong. just from the placement of the signs they must have known that they could be misconstued as some unsafe.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:46 am
The Boston thing shows how idiotic some of these city officials have gotten. The devices were obviously not bombs. They were simply circuit boards and batteries. Any middle school electronics student could have told you that from a safe distance with a telescope.
The devices were not complex. Anyone who thinks they were has been watching way too much TV.
It’s sad to see Boston and Massechusettes, once a great birthplace of American Liberty, sink to such media-generated hystaria and tyrrany.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
You forgot when IBM hired people to spray the symbols for “Peace - Love - Linux” on sidewalks all over Chicago and San Francisco. Both cities sued for the cleanup costs.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
What about alliwantforchristmasisapsp.com. That was pretty horrible. Idiots at Sony didn’t even think to mask the Whois records.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Boston’s just mad they looked stupid. I mean look at the thing. its a flat pixelated cartoon character. Its not like the terrorist are tossing these at on tanks in the war. I’ve seen sacks of oranges the looked more menacing.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
What I loved about the Boston bomb scare (I live in Boston, and thought the whole stunt was a goddamn riot) was that the media chalked it up to our police officers being more diligent than the police in other cities, but they neglected to mention the fact that the signs had been up for over a month when they discovered them.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Cool. I’m a brazilian gay that loves guerilla marketing
May 8th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
There is a saying amongst us Filipinos, that is “You should rethink ten times before doing something”.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I remember the Boston bomb scare, lol
Even though these people got arrested/fined/etc., they got a lot of publicity and attention from it. I guess the guerilla marketing can work, even if it’s the wrong way to go about it.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:01 am
The Fogetting Sarah Marshall advertising campaign (i.e. the posters) was traditional marketing, not guerilla.
The posters were in visible high traffic areas (i.e. billboards, bus stops) where traditional marketing takes place.
The Sarah Marshall girls suck anyway. They are just trying to get attention.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Another great thing to point out about that Boston thing is when the “Guerrilla Marketers” had their first press meeting and they insisted on only answering questions about 70’s haircuts. Not widely reported since it was the media being made fun of. I only managed to catch it when NPR made a 10 second report of it that morning. I’d love to see a video of that.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I beg to differ, the ATHF fiasco is an example of the sorry state of policework in our country. It is easy to recognize that those toys were not bombs; MOST ESPECIALLY once Boston’s supposed BOMB EXPERTS had arrived. Then instead of eating crow, Boston made a huge deal out of it. It was the city of Boston that was doing the most viral marketing (in an effort to get more of the anti-terror gravy train).
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:27 am
Some of these companies spent a great deal of cash on these marketing stunts, therefore they were not guerrilla forms of marketing, but gorilla marketing.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Ahhhhhh its all good. No such thing as bad street art.
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