Stunt Advertising - Guerilla Marketing Strategy Hits the Streets

If you have live in or have visited a large city, with a designated marketing area (DMA) that possesses significantly diverse demographics, chances are good that you have been exposed to a street team before. Street teams are a form of guerilla marketing where teams of individuals directly engage pedestrians with promotional materials marketing messages.

Stunt advertising is a guerilla marketing technique that is being employed by street teams (recently with a greater number of street teams) to do a better job of grabbing the public?s attention. These "stunts" are open to include any activity which might seem out of the ordinary: a group of dancers in the middle of a park, people riding unicycles, a brigade of unusual animals being handled, etc. The objective is to grab the interest of pedestrians who might have ignored the message if it were just being presented to them through fliers, kiosks and more traditional methods.

One area where street teams and stunt advertising seem to thrive is in and around college campuses. In particular, larger universities which are located near a significant urban population generate the ideal demographics for a street team and other guerilla marketing techniques to be most effective. These large educational centers are usually hubs for restaurants, bars and other social establishments and businesses which promote the kind of foot traffic which makes guerilla marketing techniques more effective.

For many years, beverage companies have used street teams to cater to their target audience at the ideal location: bars and restaurants. In these cases, the street team would consist of several representatives who would walk around the establishment, passing out free samples of products and promotional and marketing items, such as t-shirts, glassware, etc. Recently, more and more companies are incorporating stunt advertising into these street teams? arsenal of guerilla marketing tricks and techniques.

A rather large tobacco company used stunt advertising in conjunction with its street teams rather effectively in order to promote a new, smokeless tobacco product. In addition to the traditional street team methods of handing out free samples and promotional attire, the entire street team navigated the bars, sidewalks and patios on stilts. The effect was two-fold. On one hand, the stilts allowed the street team to be seen from a greater distance (which can be key when trying to promote in crowded bars and clubs). However, the stilts were so out of the ordinary that even the more seasoned bar patrons (who typically ignore street teams took notice).

You might not have seen a street team executing guerilla marketing techniques in person yet unless you have had a chance to visit New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia or San Francisco - often times these more creative and out of the ordinary forms of guerilla marketing promotions are only used in large DMA. However, stunt advertising and other forms of guerilla marketing work well in smaller DMAs, the real issue is the message and the intended audience.