The Rant: Big, Smelly, Hairy Guerrilla

By / November 7, 2008 /

Volume 15 In a Series By Felix

In his 1984 book Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson describes this new method of advertising as “an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget…relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets.” These days, according to most ad agencies, it’s just a simple term to describe unconventional marketing or advertising.

Now, lets go back to the word “imagination” for a second. Why? Because these days, I’m seeing an awful lot of tired, clichéd, obvious promotions that are masquerading as guerrilla. And I don’t know about you, but I’m bored with them. I’m done.

When guerrilla first raised its head, everyone was excited. I remember seeing a piece of work in a student book that was simply a black sign with white lettering saying, and I’m paraphrasing, “Need someone to talk to? Call 1-800-123-4567.” In the bottom corner was a logo for one of those suicide hotlines. I looked at it for a few seconds, scratched my head and said “Ok, you’ve got me. What the hell is that supposed to be?”

The team looked back and said “we’d like to put these on the top of bridges or by the railroad tracks, you know, places where people go to end it all.” I was sold. Context was everything in this case, and it turned a boring ad into a perfect blend of message and media. This was good guerrilla.

Over the years, I’ve seen a ton of good ambient work that really did inspire me, and made me push my own creative work even harder. An ad for deodorant placed on an overhead handgrip on a subway; an ad for prostate problems in a urinal; a sticker saying “now wash your hands” on ATMs, public phones, restroom doors (this was for the National Phobics Society); signs on streets saying “bedroom” for homeless charities; a vending machine serving firearms. You know this stuff. It’s good because it’s campaignable, on strategy, creative and most of all, it has context.

Fast-forward to 2008 and I’m so sick of ads in urinals that blood will shoot out of my eyes if I see another one. An ad for prostate problems placed in a urinal had context….but when you’re slapping an ad on a toilet just to try and be “out of the box” is lame. That’s not the intent of guerrilla at all. That isn’t capturing the attention of the consumer in a way that truly links to the product, and as such, it’s falling flat.

Some of the recent crap I’ve seen in urinals includes:

• A fake, cracked urinal to advertise strong beer; come on, it’s a one off, and it’s a very poor play on the word strong.
• A fake, burned urinal for – get this – an energy drink poured from a picture above. What? I guess that’s another play on strong, right?
• A small goal and soccer ball to practice keepy-uppy; it’s a stretch guys, you could see the creatives saying “how can we do something in a toilet?”
• 3M privacy LCD screens placed in front of each urinal. Now I don’t know about you fellas, but I’m never looking over at the other guy’s urinal; that’s rule #1.
• Small traffic cones glued inside a urinal to test your handling skills. That one was for Mini, and I was taken aback because they usually have a good grasp of guerrilla. What does pissing have to do with driving? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
• An ad for Bluetooth headsets saying “do your business while you do your business.” Maybe I’m old-fashioned (I’ll never wear a dumb Bluetooth earpiece) but who takes calls while they’re taking a whiz?
• A sticker above a urinal that looks like a woman’s eye looking through a hole drilled in the wall. That was for Axe. Question ladies…do you really want to see a guy draining the lizard, even if you badly want to get laid?

Those are just some of the ideas I can remember from the last few years. And you know, if you do a search for urinal advertising on Google, I would not be surprised if you came up with hundreds of results; maybe even thousands. Aside from the saturation of it all, do people really think men ponder everything in life while we take a leak?

It’s not just urinals though. I’m seeing crappy guerrilla everywhere. From messages printed on sidewalks and wall, to fake “do not disturb” signs, I’m bored with the same-old same-old. It’s ironic, because guerrilla is supposed to be smart and disruptive. These days, at least for the most part, it’s neither.

So, do us all a favor; don’t start out a project saying “you know what would be cool…if we put ads on the steps on an escalator?!” If the idea comes naturally from the brief, reinforces the strategy and most importantly of all, has context, then that’s great. Go for it, I wish you well. But otherwise, keep those tired “ideas” where they belong…in the dark, dank recesses of your head.