Guerrilla Marketing: One man’s search for meaning found the Father

I felt compelled to listen to Rage Against the Machine’s Guerrilla Radio when writing this to help inspire me.  Guerrilla marketing, guerrilla warfare, guerrilla radio; how different could they all really be?  I mean they all had the word guerrilla in them.  Sadly, I soon found that any attempt at inspiration was lost in the angst of Zach De La Rocha’s words and I was back to shuffling through my iTunes.

I then turned to GOOGLE for inspiration and clarification, and typed in Guerrilla Marketing.  The result; 936,000 entries in under 15 seconds.  If only I could read each one as fast as GOOGLE’s spiders could find them. Turns out (I had no idea) that there is a Father of Guerrilla Marketing and this “Father” has everything from books, to classes, to podcasts, to an entire association that you can be a part of.  Way back in 1984 (I was 5 at the time) Jay Conrad Levinson wrote a book appropriately titled: Guerrilla Marketing, and in this book the ground work for a radical new way to market to people was defined.

You’ve seen it before, probably have even fallen victim to it, and yet you didn’t even realize that you were being marketed to.  You thought it was random coincidence that someone just happened to be standing outside the exit of your train stop handing out free energy drinks.  Little did you know that this tactic was planned out well in advance and the target they had in mind was you.

Those bubbly people who always seem to find you in your own element looking to give you a free sample or have you try the newest product from the folks over at XYZ, they are more than just “nice people.”  They are the feet in the street that are leading the charge to market to you in the most cost effective way.  They are the soldiers of a Guerrilla Marketing Army, an army that’s around every corner, in every city, and on a mission to find you.  Don’t try to hide, don’t divert from your normal route.  Resistance is futile; they’re trained to find you and will stop at nothing till they do.