Coca Cola is perhaps one of the most famous companies that utilizes guerrilla marketing, with a long history and tradition of promoting the brand through unconventional means.

http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/cocacola-returns-outdoor-theatre-marketing-effort/

This website documents some of Coca Cola’s efforts in guerrilla marketing.

At the same time however, one of the most influential figures in guerrilla marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, the author of The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook believed that this form of marketing is best served for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Why then, would Coca Cola fiercely market its products through this form of marketing?

I think many of the main points and advantage of guerrilla marketing highlighted by Levinson actually fits very well with what Coca Cola wants to achieve. Due to Coca Cola’s unique market position as the brand that everyone knows, constantly being in the top 10 in terms of worldwide brand recognition, Coca Cola perhaps doesn’t need more customers. What Coca Cola needs however, are more returning customers, customers who would buy more of their drinks, at a more frequent rate.

Guerrilla marketing fits this perfectly because the aim of guerrilla marketing, if done right, is not to win new customers, but to get referrals, and to get more transactions with customers. This is done through the unique experience that customers go through during the guerrilla marketing (such as the Friendship Machine where you rely on someone else to get a bottle of Coca Cola, which results in an overall unique and positive experience), which solidifies their relationship with Coca Cola and make them more likely to be willing ambassadors for the brand.

Also, the advent of social media also allows such guerrilla marketing campaign to go viral on the internet as they are fresh and unique, in stark contrast of regular advertisement. This is turn, kills two birds with one stone.

http://econsultancy.com/ca/blog/63545-behavioural-marketing-and-how-to-get-your-customers-to-love-you

In the blog post by Econsultancy, the author made a great case for improving the personalization of advertising and marketing in order for customers to be more familiar with a certain brand and therefore develop brand loyalty.

In addition to that, the author also gave an example where a customer is more likely to choose a specific shop out of many other shops due to the relationship established with the shopkeeper. I find that there are several problems with this metaphor.

Firstly, the metaphor completely ignores the main problems faced by personalized advertising. The customer decides to continue going to a certain store is because of the personal and human relationship established with the shopkeeper. In the relationship, dialogues can happen between the two and a mutual bond can occur. However, many personalized advertising just display to customers what they want, actively convincing them to buy, buy, buy without actually having an avenue for customers to relate back to the product or have a conversation with people who run the product. Therefore, the differentiation between the metaphor and what actually happens with personalized advertising falls on that front.

Secondly, the problem with personalized advertising is that there is no active and voluntary channel for a customer to explicitly tell what they prefer. In the metaphor, the customer can establish a great commercial relationship with the shopkeeper is mainly due to the fact that the customer consciously tell the shopkeeper what he likes and do not like. Unsimilarly, personalized advertising only gathers information without explicit permission or conscious participation from the customer, which means just a one way relationship. Such relationship of immense power and information that the advertiser has will bring a negative impact on the perception of the customer towards the advertiser, the so called ‘uncanny valley’ which something tries to resemble a human but is not perceived to be human, causing the interaction to be extremely uncomfortable.

Overall, it is important to balance between collecting information and creating a true personal relationship.