Good versus Bad Guerilla Marketing

I'm really into guerilla marketing. I think gorillas are cute, and Che Guvera always struck me as a fashionable type of guy. Why, you go to any college campus, and you'll run into at least one person wearing his face on their chest.

I'm sure a good communist like Che would love that he's become the epitome of capitalism.

Now, according to the NYTimes article, interactive marketing is going to come to a bunch of products that have nothing to do with the Internet. Che save us - hey, get it?! No religion because of communism?! Oh ... forget it.

Anyway, because of the wonderful success of the Subservient Chicken - at least on the Internet as a viral campaign - the thought is that everything should have an interactive campaign now. But, one thing I never really have read yet is how successful was the Subservient Chicken campaign really? Did it get a bunch of people into Burger King to buy chicken? I know I never got up to get a chicken sandwich there ... and there's a BK about 5 minutes from my office. Now, the "best darn burgers" commercial (opens to Real Audio video) did make me want to go in, but I'm a sucker for jingles. Plus, I always did wish that life was more like a Rodgers & Hammerstein film or Bollywood.

But, thankfully, we now have an interactive campaign for Brawny Man at Innocent Escapes. Sorta like bad SNL soap operas. To me, this is an example of trying too hard for a guerilla campaign ... especially since they have gone on an email campaign to let people know about it.

Now, the WB also has an interesting campaign ... full, life-sized posters of various WB stars. Here's the very-loved life-size Ashlee Simpson (blonde version). This, to me, is a creative campaign. I read about it online (can't find the link), and if I were their target audience, I'd print out a few posters of the shows that I watch on the WB.

To me, this is a creative campaign. It's viral, it touches on the desire of wanting to be part of the show, and it's pretty cool idea to be able to print out a full life-sized poster. The only loser in this equation is the parents whose poor color printers die right after...

Okay, I'm going to go back and watch the Burger King ad again, and sing at the top of my voice.

Okay, I lied - instead I went over to read Robert Scoble's blog - and found this little ditty on another division at MSFT that's trying to create a guerilla campaign ... and bore the wrath of Scoble for trying to launch such a transparent effort. Scoble has an interesting take, and takes them to task for not making the site a smart marketing site.
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