Father Bob Maguire Foundation
An organisation in Australia, the Father Bob Maguire Foundation, concerns itself with issues of the homeless. Needing to highlight the plight of the homeless to a wider audience they turned to the new phenomena of Guerrilla Marketing. Guerrilla Marketing focuses on new techniques and methods of bringing a product or service to the attention of the general public. They came up with a neat solution to attract attention and promote thought in the target audience. They decorated trash cans on the street to look like dinner place settings by sticking a knife, fork, spoon and serviette onto the top of the trash can. This seemed to hit the mark perfectly, as people would associate the dinner place setting as unattainable to the homeless, who usually search trash cans for scraps of food. This to me is the acceptable face of a new industry already heading for controversy as more and more outlandish ideas are foisted onto the general public. In a further attempt to drive the message home they used the slogan “for the homeless, every day is a struggle. Donate today and help us feed the homeless”. This message along with the visual impact of the dinner place setting certainly created food for thought, and was generally considered a successful campaign.
A company manufacturing scale miniature model cars and trucks, otherwise known as Micro Machines, decided to broaden their marketing by making their products known to a wider audience. This wider audience was not limited to children and so a marketing campaign that would cross all age groups and social layers was needed. It soon transpired that normal methods would not work and so they turned to the alternative Guerrilla Marketing industry. Eventually a scheme emerged that involved spray-painting roadways, parking lots and cross roads onto existing parking lots, school areas, streets and supermarkets in the target neighbourhoods. People would see these and bring along their Micro Machines and play them on the sprayed miniature surfaces. By all accounts a great hit, and increased the sales for the manufacturer at a fraction of the cost of regular marketing campaigns. This is a good use of Guerrilla marketing, particularly as the paint used was bio- degradable and would disappear over time. All the businesses in the vicinity benefited because the people attracted to the painted play areas would buy something in one or more of the shops. Totally acceptable form of alternative marketing and an example of how it should be done.