Adding Value to Guerrilla Marketing – Oasis

This is how you do guerrilla. No seriously.

I have always believed that that there are two keys to great guerrilla marketing campaigns:

1) Surprise

2) Reward

Everyone knows that guerrilla has a wonderful ability to surprise, but where a lot of people fall flat is thinking that their selling message or tag line is enough of a reward.

Warner Brothers has done it right for the release of the new Oasis album – Dig Out Your Soul. In conjunction with BBH, Oasis taught their new catalog of songs to street performers in NYC and deployed these artists to give a first look at the new album to commuters.

Via: Adweek

The campaign was produced through a partnership between Warner Bros. Records and BBH client NYC & Company, the city’s tourism marketing arm. The organization’s web site offered fans a page where they could Google Maps and Earth to find live performances. A video documentary directed by The Malloys about the event was distributed through MySpace, and fans were encouraged to upload their own videos of the performances to a dedicated YouTube channel.

“It’s become very clear that new thinking in new media has replaced traditional ‘advertising’ executions,” said Mark Waites, creative director, founding partner of Mother in London and chairman of this year’s jury. “Clients and their agencies are becoming adept at embracing unusual approaches, concepts and [media] to transport their creative vision into work that makes viewers take notice and respond.”

The strategy is there, the location is right, and after the surprise there is value.

And if most of the words in that last sentence bore you – the work also won Grandy ANDY and a dump truck of cash ($50,000).