• Business Week, Monday, August 7, 2006 12:16 PM

Guerrilla marketing, which traditionally includes attention-getting street-theater stunts and unorthodox tactics, was once the province of low-budget advertisers who couldn't afford traditional methods to get their messages out. No more. In their new book, Guerrilla Advertising, authors Gavin Lucas and Michael Dorrian show that growing numbers of major marketers are engaged in guerrilla tactics as traditional forms of advertising seem to lose eyeballs. "Guerrilla advertising" is a catch-all phrase for nontraditional ad campaigns that take the form of theatrically staged public scenes or events, often carried out without city permits or advance public hype. "This work is very transient. It's like a rainbow. You see it, or you blink, and it's gone," says Lucas. "By using this type of guerrilla ad, companies are trying to engage with people in a way that surprises them. But if people see it again, it doesn't have the same impact." Examples include 16,000 mysterious butterfly stickers that appeared on walls and buildings around Manhattan (Microsoft), a mid-air soccer match (Adidas), and a woman napping in her bed inside a crowded Hong Kong subway station (McDonald's).

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