Guerrilla marketing is a technique used to market in a usually highly creative and highly unexpected form. Ikea used the technique to convert a bus stop into something more of an enjoyable place to sit and rest whilst waiting for your bus. Folgers made use of steam from manholes, (on an unrelated subject why do US manholes generate steam anyway?) to emulate warm coffee.

HTC and Nokia have been playing a bit with the technique as well. Nokia’s world conference was attacked by HTC offering free bus trips over to their own press conference to show off the new competitor to the iPhone4. In response to the hijacking of journalists, Nokia generated its own form of guerrilla advertising against them,in this case they released a HTC Survival kit, consisting of a sandwich, giant Nokia Finger Badge and energy boosting chocolate. Quite amusing really.

Nokia further sent an entire army of people armed with hideously red Nokia balloons to stand outside HTCs event with it claiming they know where they are going with Nokia’s Ovi Maps. Standing outside an HTC conference claiming they know where they are going however may not represent Nokia’s Ovi Maps too well however.

On the serious side of things, a spokesman for HTC says that the stuns show that Nokia considers HTC to be a serious competitor and going by the fact that my phone operator is out of stock of the desire, I can certainly agree with the assessment.

References
sparxoo.com
SMH.com.au
posima.com
Marketallica