Guerrilla Marketing - Excellent Example

Today I came across a very strange collection of sites, that at first confused me, but after some inspection I discovered they are really a perfect example of guerrilla marketing.

The sites are part of a group found here. http://www.smashourstuff.com/

Inside this site you will find a directory of four smaller sites which are all dedicated to smashing some type of object. The four sites they have so far are for smashing the following: Ipod, Nintendo Wii, PS3, and Xbox.

Apparently these guys wait up all night to be one of the first people to purchase one of these items as it comes to market. Then, right after they buy it, they go outside in front of all the other people who are waiting to buy theirs, and smash it with sledgehammers right in front of them! They buy a perfectly good item, and then smash in in from of others who are waiting to buy them.

At first I thought they were just stupid and crazy, but if you go to their sites that they create for each “event” you will find that they actually take donations from other people to fund this madness. So that means they don’t actually pay for the devices. Next I found that they actually sold the smashed Xbox on eBay for over $100! So they made money on the actual box. On top of this you must know that lots of other people like me will watch their videos. The SmashMyXbox video alone has been viewed over 1.5 million times on YouTube, not to mention how many times people viewed it on the main site.

So who cares you may say? Well, if you go to one of their sites you will notice links to other sites. I am sure these sites are paying money for traffic that is referred to them. You can make a lot of money off sending traffic to other sites, so this could be pretty lucrative. This whole process is a way for them to make ludicrous videos that people will watch and then get money when they refer them to other sites.

So, to sum up, they used a totally crazy idea, which cost them nothing to product but their time, was funded by other people, and then used it to generate money from sponsors. All of this and hosted for free at Planetboredom.net

This people, is a perfect example of guerrilla marketing. It is edgy, unconventional, low or zero cost, and drives results in a new and interesting way. For something that seemed 100% asinine to begin with, I must say I am impressed.

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