SEO is not about how many people came to your site, it is about how many of them remember you. Advertising is the same: not how many impressions you racked up, but how many of the people who saw the ad you left a memory trace with. With every one of our SEO partners we put the solution, the information or the tool each visitor came for in front of them. Because; we want to be certain we left a trace saying our site is where the answer was. We run that process by analyzing every keyword arriving at the site, one at a time.

Creating that “memory trace” is getting harder all the time, though, particularly where sustainability is concerned, a worry that is both global and abstract. The modern consumer lives through something close to stimulus blindness under the bombardment of messages coming from traditional media channels and social media. Information overload lowers the odds that even the best intentioned public service message gets noticed. It is already hard for a product ad to stick; for an environmental problem whose urgency has not been made concrete, taking root in someone’s consciousness becomes almost impossible. And this is exactly where low cost, expectation breaking guerrilla advertising campaigns come in.

How Guerrilla Advertising Sticks

In a single day we sometimes connect to hundreds of different websites, and we meet thousands of ads: walking down the street, reading a news story, or passing time in our favorite app. Guerrilla advertising is designed precisely to break through that perceptual resistance. Instead of expensive media buys, it steps in front of the audience at a moment they were not expecting, outside the usual, with a surprising and jolting effect. By their nature practical, easy to run and low cost, these campaigns pull the buyer’s interest at a far higher level than traditional methods manage.

Associate Professor Müge Burcu Codur of Hacettepe University set down this note on the subject in her paper “A STUDY ON SUSTAINABILITY THEMED GUERRILLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS”;

The aim of brands is to hold a special place in the perception of their audience by underlining the particular qualities and differences that belong to them. The traditional advertising methods used to that end subject buyers to an intense bombardment of messages, over the internet as well as through the familiar channels of radio, television and outdoor advertising. Social media, meanwhile, appears to have overtaken classical media almost entirely and, through its enveloping effect, to have taken society into the palm of its hand. Awareness of the power of social media, particularly since the start of the 2000s, has drawn far more attention to social media management. A society that had built up resistance to classical advertising and promotion is now drowned in the same density of messaging over social media. Within such a heavy load of messages, as the recipient develops resistance to the stimuli, producing the intended response becomes harder. Oskay (2021:40) stresses that the environments people live in are filled with an all but endless number of stimuli, that most of these are not perceived, and that the stimuli which can be perceived are perceived at differing levels. According to Nufer (2013:1), a consumer’s level of information overload runs between 95 and 98 percent; that is, only a very small part of the information presented stands any chance of being taken in by consumers. Which steadily lowers the likelihood of traditional advertising and promotion being perceived at all

The Volkswagen Campaign

The advertising model they built pushed memorability to a serious level. Because it encourages the person to exercise, it hands them an experience, and it sets a good many different senses in motion at once. That experience stays with you, and alongside the social responsibility it brings positive signals with it.

Other Guerrilla Advertising Examples

Why Does Guerrilla Advertising Work?

  • It is low cost, practical to run and creative.
  • It draws attention because it happens in unexpected settings: streets, parks, shopping centers.
  • The aim is to surprise the individual, stop them, make them think and create an emotional response.
  • It divides into types such as experiential (grassroots), viral, stealth, ambient and projection.
  • It makes the message easier to take in and is far more successful than traditional advertising at changing behavior.

Using It for Your Own Brand

At bottom you could call this the design, or the art, of catching people’s attention by surprising them at a moment they did not expect. Taking that in, we can work on improving our own website and thinking about what will lift the company a level. What the right process is for the work you do, we cannot know. But; you have to think about the memory trace, and inspiration is everywhere. With our SEO and Google Ads clients we sometimes spend weeks asking what we could do differently. We know very well how much effort that takes.

Conclusion: A Call for Credibility and Transparency

Guerrilla advertising offers a far more effective opportunity than traditional methods for raising public awareness and encouraging individual behavior. The expectation that brands go beyond being profit seeking structures and deliver something of benefit to society has risen.

There is a vital red line for brands here, though: greenwashing. However memorable a sustainability themed guerrilla campaign turns out to be, if the brand is not transparent and credible in what it commits to, the campaign’s positive effect will turn against it quickly. To achieve more than a memorable ad, the actions behind the message have to be sincere and real.

It should not be forgotten that messages coming from sources treated as credible always produce a larger change in behavior. Which is why the ultimate success of the art of guerrilla advertising lies not only in creativity but in the credibility at the foundation of the brand.

If you too are aiming to leave a “memory trace” rather than an “impression” in the digital world, do not shy away from creating the unexpected and taking responsibility. Inspiration is everywhere.

Give something to society and society will not forget you.