Sahil Bloom Profile picture
Sep 15, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Guerrilla marketing is fascinating.

THREAD: 10 genius guerrilla marketing campaigns (to spark your marketing creativity):
The Blair Witch Project

Prior to its release, the movie's creators released credible-looking "missing" posters to stoke intrigue around the legend.

The Blair Witch Project had a total budget of less than $500,000 and ended up with almost $250 million in box office revenues.
The IHOP Rebrand

The famous pancake chain released a series of videos indicating they were changing their name to IHOB (International House of Burgers).

The ploy worked.

It drove millions of social media impressions and they sold 4x as many burgers in the weeks that followed.
GoldToe Gets Bullish

In the middle of New York Fashion Week, GoldToe underwear put a pair of its (size XXXL) underwear in an unlikely place to steal the spotlight for their 2010 line launch: on the Wall Street Bull.

The campaign went completely viral.

Very bullish.
King Kong’s Beach

In advance of the launch of a new King Kong theme park attraction, Santa Monica residents and tourists woke up one morning to find huge footprints (and a crushed vehicle) in the sand on Santa Monica Beach.

It went wild on social media, with millions of hits.
Fiji Water Photobombs

The Golden Globes are supposed to be about the celebrities on the red carpet—but in 2019, someone else stole the show.

"The Fiji Water Girl"

The woman handing out refreshing Fiji Water strategically photobombed photos and was an instant viral success.
Red Bull Gives You Wings

Red Bull's sponsorship of Felix Baumgartner's record-setting jump was far from cheap, with an estimated price tag of ~$30 million.

But with >45m views, hundreds of millions of impressions, and an estimated $500m in new sales, it was surely a success.
Bounty's Massive Messes

Bounty installed massive messes throughout NYC in a creative awareness campaign.

From an enormous, knocked-over coffee cup to a giant melted popsicle, Bounty's campaign took over social media and cut through all the marketing noise in their category.
The Dracula Billboard

As a promotion for its new Dracula show, BBC put up a billboard with an ingenious, creative twist.

Strategically-placed bloody stakes that transformed the billboard at night—revealing a shadow of Count Dracula himself.
Deadpool Tinder Account

Marvel is known for its marketing genius, and the efforts for the Deadpool launch in 2012 were no exception.

Some Tinder users found the masked character on their list of potential matches.

Swipe right? You were taken to a page to buy tickets.
The Taco Liberty Bell

On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell took out ads in 6 major newspapers to announce an acquisition: The Liberty Bell.

The prank cost Taco Bell $300K, but was estimated to have generated over $25 million in free publicity.

Sales spiked in the weeks that followed.
What is the greatest guerrilla marketing campaign of all time?

I’m going down the rabbit hole…

Join me: Follow along @SahilBloom as I explore my curiosity and share my learnings along the way.
It appears there is a lot of debate over whether all 10 of these qualify as guerrilla marketing — in any case, just enjoy them for whatever they are.
Also, don’t be this cat.

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More from @SahilBloom

May 13
My Anti-To-Do List

(15 things I want to avoid on a daily basis)

1. Do not complain about anything.

If the thing is within your control, then go do something about it. If the thing is out of your control, then it's just a waste of energy to complain about it.Image
2. Don't allow negative people to steal your energy.

Stop avoiding difficult conversations. Embrace the need to remove toxicity from your life.

3. Do not allow more than 2 hours of inactivity.

Get up and go for a walk. Do a few pushups or lunges. Move your body regularly.
4. Do not "graze" on low-value tasks.

Parkinson's Law says that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. When you don't set fixed windows for managing low-value tasks, you end up "grazing" on them. Create short windows for processing low importance tasks.
Read 17 tweets
May 11
These 7 questions changed my life...

(ask them and they may change yours): Image
1. If I repeated this day for 100 days, would my life be better or worse?

You live your life zoomed in. It makes it difficult to assess your course.

Force a zoom out:

How would your actions from a typical day compound?

Would they steer you off course?

Adjust accordingly.
2. If someone observed my actions for a week, what would they say my priorities are?

You have two sets of priorities:

• The ones your words say you have.
• The ones your actions show you have.

If a third party observed you, would your actions reveal alignment or dislocation?
Read 13 tweets
May 9
Last weekend, I attended Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting in Omaha.

It was an incredible experience.

9 ideas from the event that I can't stop thinking about:
1. Go where you don’t belong.

One truth I’ve learned over and over again in my life: Good things happen when you put yourself in rooms where you don’t feel like you belong.

Remember: That feeling of uncertainty, fear, and discomfort is usually a sign of growth.
2. Self-awareness is a cheat code for life.

During the Q&A portion of the meeting, Warren Buffett was asked about his perspectives on AI.

He opened his response with, "I don’t know anything about AI" before sharing his perspective on his fears around the technology.

(cont.)
Read 19 tweets
May 8
This may be the best definition of success I've ever come across...

Here are Ralph Waldo Emerson's 9 Pillars of Success: Image
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote the following passage on his definition of success:

I'd break this down into nine items... Image
1. To laugh often and much: Laughter keeps us young. Without laughter, you aren't really living!

2. To win the respect of intelligent people: Earning the respect of people you admire (my adaptation on "intelligent people") through the way you live your life.
Read 11 tweets
May 6
In 2009, Stanford business professor Tina Seelig split her class into groups and issued a challenge:

Each group had $5 and 2 hours to make the highest return on the money.

At the end, they'd give a short presentation on their strategy.

What happened next was fascinating: Image
Most of the groups followed a simple approach:

• Use the $5 to buy a few items.
• Barter or resell those items.
• Repeat
• Sell final items for (hopefully) more than $5.

These groups made a modest return on their initial $5.
A few groups ignored the $5.

They thought up ways to make the most money in the allotted time:

• Made/sold reservations at hot restaurants.
• Refilled bike tires on campus.

These groups made a good return on the initial $5.

The winning group took a very different approach:
Read 15 tweets
Apr 30
Here's the secret of the most charismatic people in the world...

The 3 Levels of Listening: Image
I used to think that being charismatic meant talking the most.

I was wrong.

Charisma is about being interested, not interesting. Charismatic people are present and engaged.

They are exceptional listeners.

I recently learned that there are three levels of listening:
Level 1: "Me" Listening

You're in a conversation, but your internal voice is relating everything you hear to something in your own life.

Your internal voice runs off on tangents while the other person is talking.

You're waiting to speak.

This is the default mode of listening.
Read 9 tweets

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