Loving Leaving Lauren: How guerrilla marketing should work

When we saw the intriguing billboards popping-up around Manchester detailing nothing but the short message: ‘To Lauren, I’m sorry but I’m leaving you. Adam’ we thought we had just witnessed the most horrific of public break-ups.

However, to our relief, it turns out that in this heart-shattering break-up was between a man and his car.

It was all part of a clever guerrilla marketing campaign to raise awareness of the reopening of a Metrolink station. The campaign cleverly marked the end of the year-long construction project to rebuild the St Peters Square Station in Manchester City Centre.

The operation began with yellow billboards around Manchester showcasing the dumping of Lauren via text message. Following this a short clip was released of Adam talking to camera addressing Lauren and explaining his reasons for the breakup. The full clip, which can be viewed below, revealed that Lauren was in fact a car and was being dumped in favour of Manchester’s Metrolink system which is now back to being fully operational.

With ‘Leaving Lauren’ executing guerrilla marketing perfectly we thought we’d outline the basics just in case you’ve been inspired. Here’s a few details:

What is Guerrilla Marketing?

• Guerrilla marketing is a low cost, unconventional and attention grabbing to yield maximum impact
• The aim is to get people talking, even if, to begin with, they’re not entirely sure what they’re talking about
• As you’ve probably noticed the term takes its name from the ideas of Guerrilla Warfare. The two share characteristics in that they are both irregular in form and use small tactics to gain the biggest results.

How can you use Guerrilla Marketing?

• In order to use guerrilla marketing properly you will need plenty of imagination and ability to think outside the box.
• An effective guerrilla marketing campaigns will have the element of surprise. The aim is to shock in order to create lots of social buzz

Why should you use Guerrilla Marketing?

• This kind of marketing can be very effective versus traditional marketing methods. The Metrolink campaign is a perfect example. Traditionally there would be very little excitement surroundings the re-opening of a tram stop and we probably would have missed the news. However, marketing it in this way means everyone is talking about it
• Depending how you plan and construct your campaign they can also be relatively cheap compared to other marketing tactics. Because they create such interest within the community, media outlets are willing report these exciting developments without the need for formal announcements, thus raising the profile of your campaign with little additional effort from your team.

The ‘Leaving Lauren’ campaign was a great example of this style of campaign working exactly how it should.

A stand-alone press release or news article to announce to re-opening of a tram station, could never create so much buzz and that is the beauty of guerrilla marketing.