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Best guerrilla marketing campaign (Payless / DXC)

payless palessi guerrilla marketing

Selling $40 shoes for $600 – check

Embarrassing pretentious people – check

Going viral – check

What’s not to like about DXC’s Palessi campaign? For those who missed it, they set up a fake brand store in a former Armani store, invited some influencers and showcased some expensive high-end shoes to prove that quality is not the issue with expensive shoes – price is.

Learn more about this campaign…

 

 

Best competitor-based campaign (DuckDuckGo)

duckduckgo-vs-google-campaign

Privacy was a hot topic in 2018, we’ve had a ton of leaks, scandals of all sizes and a very hyped up Facebook hearing.

Since DuckDuckGo is a search engine that’s all about privacy, their research on how their biggest competitor handles user data fits perfectly.
The short version is: Google doesn’t care if you’re logged out or using incognito mode, search results are still personalized and tailored around you.
Read the full version here…

Best situational marketing (Toyota)

toyota-fire-instagram-post

Act 1. Instagram post.

After the deadly and devastating fire in California, Toyota driver, also a nurse, posted a picture of his truck praising it for being able to withstand the conditions and helping him rescue people during the fire. This Instagram post alone is a great ad for Toyota trucks, not much to improve.

Act 2. New car.

Only a fool would miss an opportunity like this, and there are no fools at Toyota. They gave the news about their truck being capable of withstanding extreme conditions a push by gifting a brand new truck to said nurse, improving the overall image of their brand in addition to the image of their products.

Best Social Media Campaign (City of Los Angeles)

city-of-la-looking-for-designer

A simple yet creative ad that went viral at the beginning of 2018. What’s not to like about it? There were a lot of great SMM campaigns but I personally liked this one for its low effort. This is 100% my kind of ad.
Original tweet…

Fail of the year (Justice)

justice-reddit-guerrilla-marketing

First, I’d like to establish that I love Justice, it’s one of my all-time favorite bands which makes this sh*tshow that may or may not be their marketing campaign that much worse. It’s bad either way.

So what happened?
Reddit user posted a picture of his old iPod in r/pics to celebrate the 10 good years they spent together.

And who by Xavier from Justice shows up in the comments as soon as the post hits the front page.
Xavier offers to send the user a new iPod with some new music on it, class act. And this is where everything starts falling apart.

Xavier disappears to never be seen again.

WTF, Justice? You show up, you do something cool, people go livid, you have thousands of your fans in the comments asking you questions and you just go away instead of spending at least an hour to promote your upcoming album?

Here’s how it looks like as a result:
A post with a band logo.
Band member creates a Reddit account to promote their upcoming album (a coincidence?)
Band member disappears forever.

This is not so much about a bad campaign but more about a missed opportunity. You had the perfect chance to and you blew it…
You can’t just use a community without being a part of it and not look like an ass.

This presentation on guerrilla marketing might become a good GM example in 2021, I just need it indexed.