Why You Need Guerrilla Postering in Your Marketing Strategy

When I was a kid my room was covered with posters- I remember Dominique Wilkins doing a windmill dunk, the Ramones with guitars, and one with Jim Morrison and lyrics from American Prayer. I loved those posters, and the images on them have stuck with me. As I grew up, I would still bring home posters from events to remind me of the experience, and eventually I made my own posters for events that I was part of. Postering for a guerrilla campaign does all of those things- offering memorable images and something to carry home- and more. It’s one of the most direct and versatile options that retains effectiveness even as it evolves to work with new media. Watch the first half of this video to see postering in action and the second half to see how it integrates. Then keep reading for 5 reasons why you need Guerrilla Postering…

1. Geographic Micro-targeting

Postering allows you to choose highly targeted groups of people to see your messaging. You can hang them right outside particular restaurants, subway stations, concert venues, or any other location where the people you want to know will be. 21^st Century Breakdown spans age-brackets and defines the evolution of punk- where better to reach the many ages of punk than New York City.

2. High-Quality Handouts & Take-Aways

Anytime you have posters, you need to have lots of them and you need to give them away. Encouraging the audience to take the posters promotes involvement. In the video for Green Day’s 21^st Century Breakdown, you see dozens of people turn their heads for the neon chalk stencil or stop to watch the guerrilla projection. Those people took home posters, and every time they look at that poster they’ll remember that experience at Union Square.

3. Commuter touch-point

Postering carries the original guerrilla torch of speaking to people with a unique, meaningful message when they aren’t expecting it- and putting them in high-traffic areas only makes sense. Blanketing busy urban areas in New York City offers a subtle call to action for people while they’re en route to work, lunch, subway, etc.

4. SMS Integration

Postering is a great vehicle for “text-to” campaign promotions. Add your “text-to” code to the poster and you catch the people with a subtle call to action on consistent postering campaign. This is especially effective in urban commuter campaigns like the Green Day campaign in New York.

5. Social Media Integration.

It can jumpstart any viral, social media aspect of the campaign. We have had consistent success with promoting contests, trivia and Facebook Fan Page aspects of campaigns. As event and guerrilla promotion continue to grow up with the Internet, online/offline integration will become more frequent.

Posters have been around long before guerrilla marketing was a concept but have become a stand-by, versatile guerrilla tactic. Whether as the key element or an integrated aspect, postering should be part of your next guerrilla marketing strategy. Green Day doesn’t sell millions of albums without knowing what they’re doing.