5 minutes read.
About 30 years ago, a few of us launched a tiny local T-shirt brand. We were still students at the time, and we didn’t know the first thing about advertising theory. What we did know was that we had no money, and the internet (such as it was) wasn’t going to help us.
Yes, we had brand websites, but they were clunky, expensive to build, and just… sat there. There were no algorithms, no virality, no feeds to push content forward. If no one pointed in your direction, no one knew you were there.
So, with no money, we leaned on what we did have: some instincts and a bit of creativity. We cut some stencils, grabbed some spray paint, and started stamping our logo onto city sidewalks. Then we hung our shirts in places where no T-shirt had any business being. Across rooftop terraces, over electric cables in pedestrian zones, anywhere they’d stop someone mid-step and make them go, “Wait, what?”
We photographed everything and blindly sent the pictures out to media outlets, hoping someone might pick it up. And as luck would have it, it was smack in the middle of the silly season, when news is scarce, and editors will run almost anything that’s remotely interesting, so, yes… they did. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were running guerrilla marketing. It’s a thing.
What Is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla marketing has little to do with budgets and media buys. It’s about capturing attention through doing something unexpected, strange, funny, or smart.
Instead of paying for space or airtime, you earn attention by interrupting patterns. Like a T-shirt strung across a street or a giant hotdog car rolling through town at the time, when hardly anyone owned a car. A weird moment, if you want, that makes people stop and wonder what they just saw. Low-cost, high impact, that earns its attention, and yes – in the internet era, we also started to call this: virality.
A Rolling Hotdog and the Birth of the Idea
One of the earliest known guerrilla campaigns dates to 1936. Oscar Mayer, an American meat producer, made a hotdog-shaped car, called the Wienermobile, and sent it touring across America. It handed out hotdog shaped whistles, delighted kids, and caused general confusion on the streets.
This was slow “virality” with no hashtags, based on a ridiculous vehicle, novelty, and the ability to spark curiosity. It did well. People talked. Kids laughed. Adults pointed. The stunt gained its brand nationwide awareness, built on second glances. It worked then for the same reason it works now: people remember what breaks the pattern.
Wienermobile with added cockpit, 1936, Oscar Mayer Foods Corporation, Madison, WI – Wisconsin Historical Museum
The Psychology of the Unexpected
Guerrilla marketing might look spontaneous (and I agree, sometimes is pure stumble and luck), but under its hood, it’s psychology. Here’s what’s going on when something unexpected hijacks your brain:
1. We’re Wired to Notice What’s Out of Place
Our brain’s job is to keep us alive. When something doesn’t fit, like a T-shirt on the street or a statue of a girl staring down a bull (we’ll get to this example), we snap to attention.
Psychologists call this the orienting reflex. Our brains say, “Wait, what?” and shift focus. And because of something called the Von Restorff Effect, we’re more likely to remember the thing that breaks the pattern than the surroundings.
2. Emotions Drive Sharing
Delight, surprise, confusion, cringe, even anger—strong emotions like these push us to share the experience. It’s too good, too maddening, too funny to keep it for ourselves.
We also tend to trust stories from people we know more than from brands (yes, the premise early influencers built on). That’s how word-of-mouth starts: something weird happens, and we must tell someone about it.
3. Crowds Attract Crowds
Humans are mimics. If we see a crowd reacting to something – a street stunt, a statue, a guy in a chicken suit – we want to know what we’re missing. It’s partly mirror neurons – nature’s older siblings of what we now call FOMO. Guerrilla campaigns tap into that. One person stops, then five, and when you have a crowd, you have yourself an event.
4. Mental Discomfort Works Too
You know, when you see something so strange, it makes you uncomfortable? In the world of marketing, this would be, shall we say, a mouldy burger in a food ad (we’ll come to this example also). And yet, gross as it may be, it was also as yellow post-it stuck to our brain. That’s cognitive dissonance in action. It forces your brain to resolve the mismatch, and in doing so, it plants the idea deeper.
Guerrilla marketing often leans into this discomfort. It pokes. It creates friction that holds the attention longer.
5. Novelty Feels Good
When we encounter something delightful or new our brains release a chemical reward: dopamine. It’s the same little hit when you discover a hidden detail, clever twist, a street art piece, or an early resolution of a whodunnit novel. This tiny rush becomes associated with the brand behind it. If the experience is good enough, we’ll go looking for that feeling again.
On Being Unforgettable.
Guerrilla marketing doesn’t chase stunts to ger attention. Later sometimes works to, but understanding how people notice, feel, and remember works better. We didn’t know any of the marketing theory when we started out with spray paint and T-shirts. We were just trying to be different and seen. However, looking back, the basic principles were there: make people look twice, give them something to pause and talk about, and trust that a strange enough idea will travel.
In part two: real-world campaigns that successfully used guerrilla principles.