"Alternative advertising" is a relatively new term in the lexicon of marketing. It is also called "guerrilla marketing." The latter term describes quite well the tactics used in this kind of advertising. "Guerrilla" is defined by Merriam-Webster Online as "a person who engages in irregular warfare, especially as a member of an independent unit carrying out harassment and sabotage."

Guerrilla marketing relies on irregular, creative, unconventional means of reaching the public, usually through free or low-budget methods. We are accustomed (and perhaps inured) to seeing billboards, magazine ads, and television spots, all touting the virtue and value of many kinds of products and services we are being asked to buy. Guerrilla marketing operates through messages on escalator handrails, "takeout billboards" like coffee sleeves, pizza boxes, and Chinese takeout boxes, and free product samples handed out on the street.

Alternative advertising tends to be more interactive than the usual media advertising. It’s not always clear whether we are being entertained or targeted for a sale, whether we are a customer or someone with whom the advertiser has a personal relationship. This lack of clarity acts to benefit advertisers. We may have built up certain defenses, over time, against being persuaded by advertising to spend our precious money for something we don’t really need or want, or for a product of poor quality, or for something that costs more than we might spend elsewhere.

These defenses are like filters that we use to look at advertising. The filters are absent when we look at other aspects of our life, and without them we are more receptive to the advertiser’s message. For example, take any program on one of the very successful television "shopping channels." The viewer is encouraged to call in and chat with the host about the product being sold. Over a period of time, the viewer may come to think of certain hosts as friends whose opinion is valued. You’re more likely to buy an attractive product when you see a friend wearing it or otherwise enjoying it than when you just see it advertised in the usual fashion.

This increased susceptibility is precisely the goal of advertisers. It’s also the reason why guerrilla marketing is attracting more and more attention, much controversy, and a strong adverse reaction on the part of some sectors of the population.

Where is the Line Drawn?

In considering new media for guerrilla advertising, advertisers want to avoid those filters that people normally use when viewing advertising. It’s no accident that the vocabulary of alternative advertising mimics that of undercover warfare: a "covert initiative," "stealth advertising," "marketing under the radar." Blurring the edges between truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, life and advertising is a critical component, but it’s a risky one. These days, we live bombarded by information overload. It’s tricky for marketers to figure out creative ways to bypass our filters, get inside our heads and our hearts, and make us want that new product.

All the ingenious games, surveys, and diversions aside, with alternative advertising the product that’s being advertised has to be at least adequate, and preferably something a little bit special. If it turns out not to measure up to expectations, customers are likely to react with a collective resentment against the company. This backlash will be even more profound because they will feel they have somehow been duped, their emotions manipulated, and their trust betrayed.

The more delicately balanced an object is upon its base, the easier it is to tip it off with just a touch. Alternative market advertisers know that, for example, it has become easy to ignore television ads: our TV sets are equipped with devices that mute the commercials or skim through them rapidly, or we may simply get up and go for a snack when the ads begin. If people have tired of TV commercials, might we not even more easily produce a backlash against the whole guerrilla marketing genre? The higher and the faster you climb, the harder you fall.

And there have been plenty of examples of falls, when fakery and deception have knocked the struts out from under the perpetrators. Only one of these is the uproar in 2002, when Sony Pictures Entertainment was discovered to have been faking favorable critic reviews of its new films. As a result of this inquiry, during which it was found that Sony was also using employees posing as genuine moviegoers in TV ads, three other large film companies admitted to showing spurious TV testimonials using company employees.

People Trusting People Through Personal Connections

Still another facet of alternative marketing is word-of-mouth marketing. It has many subcategories: buzz, viral marketing, blog marketing, and social network marketing are only a few. The value of this type of marketing is that it seems to create a personal connection between the potential buyer and someone who is recommending the product. That’s effective, because we tend to trust what we hear from individuals who are not directly connected with a product they are endorsing.

Take, for example, a current TV advertisement for Boniva, a drug that is supposed to help prevent osteoporosis. The actress Sally Field is featured, talking about her own osteoporosis and giving positive reinforcement for the drug. When we hear such a popular figure discussing her own health and recommending this treatment, we tend to trust her opinion more than we might trust, say, a representative of a pharmaceutical company touting the company’s new product.

Generally, the biggest problem with marketing campaigns focused on word of mouth is disclosure of connections. We trust what we think is an objective opinion about a product. We also trust a subjective opinion coming from an individual we consider trustworthy. However, if we discover that the “trustworthy" person actually has no personal experience with the product, and is being paid by the company that makes the product to give a testimonial, we may not be so certain that the information given was accurate. What makes Sally Field credible in her ads for Boniva is that she is publicly very open about her osteoporosis, and is actually leading a “Rally with Sally for Bone Health" campaign that aims to educate women about the condition.

There are limits, though, to what the general public will accept in terms of advertising and corporate sponsorship. In 2001, a New York couple used Yahoo! and eBay to offer naming rights to their baby son for a minimum of $500,000. Their intention was to use the common practice of corporate sponsorship to finance raising and educating their baby. They were willing to name him Microsoft, Coke, Kraft – pretty much any company who would come up with the fee could name the little boy. And, rather shockingly, a survey conducted by AmericanBaby.com right after the couple’s plan hit the news revealed that approximately half of all parents surveyed would consider naming their child for a corporation, if the payoff was large enough!

Nonetheless, there were no bids from the corporate world. They may have been scared off by public reaction to the couple’s behavior – they were called money-grubbers, heartless, crass, and worse, in blogs, letters to editors, and personal communications. (The baby, incidentally, was named Zane, since no company offered the financial incentive required.) It appears that this is where we as a society draw the line.