Guerrilla communication, visual consumption, and consumer public relations

Public Relations Review 34 (2008) 303–305

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

Short communication

Guerrilla communication, visual consumption,

and consumer public relations

Melanie Joy McNaughton∗

Bridgewater State College, A-7, 291 South Finley Street, Athens, GA 30605, United States

article info

Article history:

Received 24 September 2007

Received in revised form 20 February 2008

Accepted 26 March 2008

Keywords:

Guerrilla communication

Public relations

Circuit of culture

Visual consumption

abstract

Guerrilla communication has grown into an increasingly prominent strategy adopted by

large corporations such as American Express, BP Amoco, Chrysler, Hershey Foods, and Pepsi.

In its attention-grabbing instantiations, guerrilla communication points to the convergence

of advertising, marketing, and public relations in consumer communication practices. This

essay also considers guerrilla communication’s place in the circuit of culture.

© 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Guerrilla communication originated as a means for small businesses with small budgets to grab consumers’ attention,

an approach developed in Guerrilla marketing (Levinson, 1984). From these roots, guerrilla communication has grown into

an increasingly prominent strategy adopted by large corporations. Guerrilla communication is the blanket term used to

describe unconventional methods of grabbing consumers’ attention which traffics in shock value to “cut through the clut￾ter.” As such, guerilla communication denotes consumer communication practices that stand well outside the bounds of the

mainstream, and sometimes well outside the bounds of common sense and decency. This essay explores guerrilla commu￾nication, a consumer communication practice which while garnering significant attention in media, industry, and consumer

circles has garnered little in the way of critical academic investigation. I argue that guerilla communication illustrates a

convergence in consumer communication between advertising, marketing, and public relations at the same time that it

problematizes traditional interpretations of consumer communication’s place and function in cultural cycles of production

and consumption.

Two examples of guerrilla communication include assvertising and BumvertisingTM. Assvertising was a 2004 campaign

developed by Night Agency (self-described as “Earth’s foremost creative marketing company” on their assvertising campaign

website, www.ass-vertise.com) to promote a fitness class, titled “Booty Call,” for the New York Health and Racquet Club.

Assvertising, as one might suspect, employed well-formed, underwear-clad backsides as billboards to advertise the class and

generated high degrees of media attention. BumvertisingTM is a trademarked communication campaign which used homeless

persons (“bums”) to promote interest in PokerFaceBook.com: panhandlers were paid a fee to tack a PokerFaceBook.com

placard to signs they used to solicit money from passersby.

1. Guerrilla communication: consumer communication convergence

Advertising, marketing, and public relations share much of the same territory, an intersection born out in buzz about

guerilla communication tactics as well as in industry literature. Guerrilla communication functions as advertising given

∗ Tel.: +1 706 548 4124.

E-mail address: [email protected].

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2008.03.031