The Future of Advertising

Oh, Guerilla Marketing

Delving into this deceitful and utterly fascinating business has been an eye-opening experience for myself and my faithful reader(s). I have discussed my own ideas for guerilla marketing campaigns as well as critiqued other company’s own ideas. I put a guerilla twist on the dancing in the rain skit and found inspiration for a new flyer campaign with pictures. I admit that I have not been as dutiful as I should have in these last months but none-the-less I shall grace the blog world with my final thoughts on the subject.

The baby boomer generation is having a very hard time these days controlling their children. We have grown up and low-and-behold are NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING like our parents. They can’t understand how to reach us. We are watching less and less TV. We are spending more time searching the internet while talking on the phone and sending while listening to our Ipod. Newspapers are slowly going out of business as more and more of us are getting our news from online sources. When we do watch TV, TiVo is there to save us the agony of watching more ads that try to reach us. Generation Y in one elusive consumer.

Out of the ashes of this marketing turmoil comes Guerilla marketing, the answer to our media conundrum that America is in. Basically, after the conventional media was sufficiently saturated with ads, companies had to find different ways to advertise. Guerilla marketing started at the grassroots level as a solution for smaller companies to gain awareness. Companies that could not afford to pay the rising costs of mainstream media changed their tactics. Just as in real warfare, guerilla marketing catches the big guns off balance, it forces them to change the way they work, and it weakens them. They have adapted in a big way, companies such as Motorola, Disney, Microsoft, Sony, EASports and many others have all embraced Guerilla Marketing.

Rising to meet this demand are a fleet of Guerilla Marketing companies that will work with the companies. Companies such as Alt Terrain, and GoGorilla Media are just a couple of new companies. These companies offer a service but the roots of guerilla marketing were illegal.

Guerilla marketing has historically been borderline illegal. Now with instead of legality issues they are facing moral issues. Now covert consumers are pitching products to consumers in stores, on the streets, and at bars. Fuax consumers are name dropping products to other consumers. I guess the avg. 8,000 ads we see a day wasn’t enough, now they attack us while we are relaxing with a drink. These fake consumers could lean over your shoulder and ask for a name-brand drink, or ask you to try a devise that they seem to just be playing with. For example Sony introduced one of their camera phones by having undercover agents ask tourists to take a picture of them using the camera. This is not an attempt to sell the product, or an invasion of privacy, but it is deception.

I do not think that the future of guerilla marketing will include this new type of devious intrusion in life. I think that the actual recreation of fantastic advertising will be the future. My ideas for the Pepsi ad and my idea for the male models walking the catwalk will be a much more ethical way of promoting a product. It will also take away the space between the advertiser and the consumer. This type of ad will be fully interactive and cheap to produce. They can control what message the consumer gets by highly training the models in how to interact with potential customers.

Basically to sum up where advertising is going in the next ten years I will propose my theory. TV advertising = Gone, with the exception of superbowl or other large events where the ads are part of the event. Radio ads = Hurting, once radio goes digital, satellite radio will become more and more popular and channels that are commercial free will be more appealing. Magazine ads = Good shape. Magazines that are for pleasure and not business will continue to be popular, and to offset prices ads go with them. This will continue in the next ten years, not much will change. Internet = New and more interactive advertising will be created that will be 100% personalized for our convenience. Guerilla marketing = The government will try to regulate it more and larger companies will try to dominate the industry, but the it will persist to be a thorn in corporate sides as smaller companies continue to use their quick adoption and creative minds to gain markets. That is what will happen.

Cruisin with Harpoon

The beer industry has been changing rapidly in the last few years. Import and Micro-brews are controlling a larger portion of the market and the large beer companies are losing business. One of the first companies to start their own micro-brew is Harpoon. Their company is now the largest craft brew in New England. In an effort to thank the customer they have embarked on a guerilla marketing plan.

They travel around in a moving van with a large logo on the side of it and stop at the locations that first sold their product. They make stops at local bars and restaurants that helped enlarge the company. Their stops will increase awareness of their beer and improve people’s perception of the beer. They will see that the company is giving back to the consumer and is truly grateful for the business.

Harpoon also sponsors bicycle teams, the Pan-Mass challenge Jimmy Fund bike race and some road races and festivals. They choose to sponsor these events because they can’t compete with Budweiser or Coors in conventional advertising.