"get a free portrait!" & more practical guerilla marketing examples

marketing budgets are a scare resource for every startup. finding innovative ways to reach more customers with less money therefore is key. "guerilla marketing", a concept introduced by conrad levinson in 1985 can be one answer.

wikipedia describles guerilla marketing as "...an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget." so much about the theory, but how to put that in practice? let´s have a look at three recent examples.

the first one is from the last barcamp vienna 2010 (thanks to the organizers rolf & max and the sponsors by the way!). when everyone was invited to post their proposed sessions, young photographer christian lendl put up the following "portrait photo for a link for a link" to his homepage.

by spending one hour of his time, he reached around 60 barcampers, almost a third of the attendants. now for marketers, that is a extremely good conversion rate! 60 people remember his name and will put links on their blogs, so his own website will rise in the search rankings, without one euro spend on adwords.

what about riding on the hype wave of someone else, to gain customer attention?
in this case it was the company ifixyouri using the apple ipone 4 hype to demonstrate their dedication towards their business: repairing iphones. the upcoming ihpone is supposed to use a 30 times more flexible front cover then used in the iphone 3gs and should therefore be less prone to breaking. at their company blog they published a post "iphone 4 glass - will it break?" to check that out. so they took a new iphone 4 an threw it on the floor. the glass broke at the third try.
disproving the impression the one could get from apple´s presentation, that the new glass would be much more durable, brought them plenty of attention. cost? approximately 30-40 us$ (they sell the iphoen 4 glass repair for 69 us$, so their actual costs will be much lower).


considering the ranking on techmeme and the respective discussion following, that was much more attention time then they would get for 40 us$ worth of printing standard marketing folders. p.s. that they maybe got inspired by "will it blend" does not make this guerilla marketing any less effective.

let´s move on to a third example, graffiti style guerilla marketing. regardless if one considers graffiti as art or daub, they are everywhere and the are a provocative in every way. using graffiti in the public space form marketing purposes remains illegal though(at least here in austria).
although sometimes graffiti are used without raising too much attention of the city authorities, this example of using graffiti style advertisement of telering, a local austrian mobile phone network operator, did not go unnoticed.
as telering was not allowed to spray the advertising message all over vienna the just thought different. why spraying colour on those walls which is forbidden when you can clean the walls - which is perfectly legal? so they did some selective cleaning, whileprotecting a dirty brick wall by a stencil. and that was the result:

again, the cost of the idea and "cleaning" their message on the walls showed true guerilla spirit and was in perfect relation to the attention gained.
that were three examples of great creative approaches to marketing. so what´s the guerilla marketing campaign for your start.up?
p.s. if the guerilla style sounds interesting, why not checking out another idea of conrad levinson´s book "guerilla marketing": "5 words to describe your business".

inside barcamp innsbruck 09, part 1/2

on the way back from innsbruck to vienna, the lazy train speed lets the thoughts about the april 09 edition of the barcamp innsbruck april 09 float freely. let´s have a look on the surroundings of the barcamp and then into selected sessions.

thanks to the organizing forces behind the 2nd edition of the barcamp in tyrol, christop dolar & astrid millebner. they organized a great location at the „zukunftszentrum“/ future-center right in the center of innsbruck. thanks!

a big open space, with room to hang out along the windows and the presentation area right at the heart provided the open atmosphere one would like to see for every barcamp.
there was plenty of good coffee and the omnipresent twittering and taking pictures with and of each other. and well, quite some good sessions. while the not-so-standard-conference format may seem anarchistic to outsiders, the sessions itself appear almost like magic in an ever aging surprisingly disciplinary style. barcampers hang out serious style. let´s look at some.

pichting bad and well done
weisswo, a local map based start.up held a "sales" presentation. obviously the did not think about the audience ahead. that never works. not at all.

mobeedo was also pitching their product, but what a difference. [update] richard spindler was proudly presenting their product, delivering a „wow“ effect and looking for feedback made the crowd come in front to see what they can do on the g1 android phone with mobeedo.

their video is worth watching.

what else? what about: iphone app development
well, well, an interesting practial and down to earth slot about iphone app development by thomas katzelberger. albeit the 1 billion downloads money printing machine for apple, anyone wanting to provide an application at the apple itunes store?1.800€! that´s how much it costs the tempted developer.

99€ per year for the right to put the app on the store. around 700€ for an iphone to test apps that use gps and the motion sensor. and well, best thing last, to run the free sdk, a hefty 1.000€ for an apple macbook. that´s because the sdk only runs on apple machines. 1.800€, well that is serious stuff.

after that said and ignoring the ever appearing stories about instant american millionaire richness of some developers, there is one magic thing to remember: top 100.

if your app is not in there, there is no attention. no attention, now money. wanting to make money via apps means using the short time frame which every new app get´s on the store. after that, a hefty release/update schedule can help to stay on the front page and so make the uphill battle into the top 100.

and no, do not even try to spend advertising for your iphone apps, that is just a waste, according to thomas katzelberger , who also says „do not expect anything, do invest only the minimum“.

thanks also to the live streaming efforts of luca via mogulus, quite some sessions (depending on the mood of luca´s wintel machine) were streamed out to the interested barcamp follower.

so much for the first part. more on this years barcamp innsbruck coming up soon.