University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Fall 2010 Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing Michael Serazio University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Public Relations and Advertising Commons Recommended Citation Serazio, Michael, "Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 285. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/285 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/285 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing Abstract This dissertation examines the development of guerrilla marketing strategies and techniques. At the dawn of the 21st century, as the traditional advertising model evolves thanks to changes in technology, markets, commercial clutter, and audience cynicism, marketers are increasingly exploring new and re- imagining old ways of communicating brand messages and managing consumers. By studying the practice of guerrilla marketing – the umbrella term here for an assortment of product placement, outdoor alternative-ambient, word-of-mouth, and consumer-generated approaches – we can better understand an emergent media environment where cultural producers like advertisers strategize and experiment with the dissemination of information and the application of persuasion through covert and outsourced flows. Their creative license is remarkable not only in terms of content but equally that of context: expansively reconfiguring the space typically partitioned for commercial petition. As befitting a public relations mindset, the guerrilla message they seek to seed travels bottom-up, through invisible relay, or from decentralized corners so as to subtly engage audiences in seemingly serendipitous ways.