# Guerrilla Marketing (#121)

Unconventional stunts that earn attention in unexpected places — then get turned into repeatable strategy. The point isn't the one-off spectacle. It's finding a memorable, low-cost way to break through, proving it works small, and running it again.

Two operating principles govern everything below:

- **Think in stories, not campaigns.** People don't share your funnel. They share a story worth retelling. Design the moment so the person who receives it wants to tell someone else.
- **Test small before going big.** A guerrilla idea is a hypothesis. Prove it on a handful of targets before you spend real money scaling it.

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## Direct Mail: The 3-Rule Framework

Physical mail is the most under-used guerrilla channel in SaaS because most people do it lazily — blasting cheap swag at a bought list. Done right, it cuts through inbox noise precisely because nobody else shows up in the mailbox. Every direct-mail play must satisfy all three rules:

1. **Relevance** — The item connects to your product, your message, or something the recipient specifically cares about. A random branded mug is noise. A gift that lands a joke about their exact problem is a story.
2. **Relationship-building** — The mailer opens or deepens a relationship. It's a gift, not a pitch. If the recipient feels sold to, you've spent money to annoy someone.
3. **Precision targeting** — You know exactly who is receiving it and why. Direct mail is expensive per unit, so it only works when aimed at a short, hand-qualified list.

### The ROI discipline

A $50–200 package sent to an unqualified lead is malpractice. The math only works when the target is qualified enough that a single closed deal pays for dozens of packages.

- **Qualify before you spend.** Reserve high-cost mailers for named accounts and hard-to-reach decision-makers where the deal size justifies the cost.
- **Test small before scaling.** Send to a handful first. Measure reply and meeting rates. Only scale the version that actually earns responses.

### Corey's Unicorn Floatie Campaign

To reach marketing leaders who ignore cold email and screen their calls, Corey mailed **giant inflatable unicorn pool floaties** to a short list of hard-to-reach targets. The floatie is absurd, oversized, and impossible to ignore — it lands as a story, not a pitch (relevance + relationship), aimed at a hand-picked list where each closed deal dwarfs the package cost (precision + ROI discipline). Recipients remembered it, mentioned it, and replied.

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## Case Library (inspiration fuel)

Steal the *pattern*, not the prop. Each of these turned a small, unconventional act into outsized attention or revenue.

- **WePay's 600-lb ice block** — At PayPal's developer conference, WePay dropped a 600-pound block of ice with money frozen inside and a sign reading **"PayPal Freezes Your Accounts."** A pointed, physical jab at a competitor's real weakness, staged exactly where the audience was.
- **Xero skywriting** — Xero paid for **skywriting over TechCrunch Disrupt**, hijacking a competitor-heavy event's attention from above without buying a booth.
- **Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner space jump** — A supersonic freefall from the edge of space drew **8 million concurrent live viewers** — a story so big it dwarfed any ad buy.
- **Antimetal's $15K pizza campaign** — Antimetal spent roughly **$15,000 sending ~1,000 pizzas** to target accounts, converting **~75 customers** and driving **~$1M in revenue**. Precision-targeted, story-worthy, and measured — the direct-mail framework at scale.
- **Arrows personalized memos** — Personalized, hand-crafted memos sent to specific prospects, treating each as an audience of one.
- **ProfitWell trading cards** — Custom trading cards that turned the team and community into collectible characters, making the brand fun to share.
- **Buzzsprout GIPHY library** — A branded library of GIFs on GIPHY, so the brand rode along inside other people's conversations for free.
- **Wistia "Gear Squad vs Dr. Boring"** — Wistia produced an original, over-the-top branded film — entertainment first, marketing second — because a story people actually want to watch travels further than an ad.

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## How to Use This With a Client

1. **Pick the story.** What's the one memorable thing a target would retell? Start from the story, then reverse-engineer the tactic.
2. **Qualify the list.** For any high-cost play (direct mail especially), name the exact accounts and confirm the deal size justifies the spend.
3. **Run the 3-rule check** on physical mail: relevance, relationship-building, precision targeting. If it fails any one, redesign it.
4. **Test small.** Ship to a handful, measure replies/meetings/coverage, and only scale what earns a response.
5. **Turn the stunt into a system.** If it works, make it repeatable — a recurring mailer program, a series of films, an ongoing library — rather than a one-time spike.

*Source: Corey Haines, Founding Marketing, ch. 13.*
