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Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations
Fall 2010
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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
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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].
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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. Through a
close examination of emblematic campaign examples, trade press coverage, and in-depth interviews with
prominent practitioners, this project peels back the curtain on a form of cultural production that reworks
the conventional archetype of mass communication and rethinks how consumers might be managed.
Drawing upon Foucauldian theory that conceptualizes an active subject rather than a form of domination
that has often defined the use of power, I argue that this is a regime of casual, if not “invisible” consumer
governance that accommodates yet structures participatory agency; self-effaces its own authority and
intent through disinterested spaces and anti-establishment formats; opens up the brand-text as a more
flexible form; and democratizes in favor of heterarchical collaboration. It is, in short, advertising that tries
not to seem like advertising. By studying the inspirations, machinations, and designs behind these
campaigns to uncover and map the institutional discourse and cultural logic at work, I identify and
analyze common themes of power and practice that animate otherwise disparate advertising executions
and help redefine media industries.
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Dissertation
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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Communication
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Barbie Zelizer
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Katherine Sender
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Joseph Turow
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marketing, advertising, branding, cultural production, new media, consumer culture
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Communication Technology and New Media | Critical and Cultural Studies | Public Relations and
Advertising
This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/285
YOUR AD HERE:
THE COOL SELL OF GUERRILLA MARKETING
Michael Serazio
A DISSERTATION
in
Communication
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2010
Supervisor of Dissertation
______________________________
Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication
Graduate Group Chair
______________________________
Katherine Sender, Associate Professor of Communication
Dissertation Committee
Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication
Katherine Sender, Associate Professor of Communication
Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing
COPYRIGHT
2010
Michael Serazio
iii
ABSTRACT
YOUR AD HERE: THE COOL SELL OF GUERRILLA MARKETING
Michael Serazio
Barbie Zelizer
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.
Through a close examination of emblematic campaign examples, trade press coverage,
and in-depth interviews with prominent practitioners, this project peels back the curtain
iv
on a form of cultural production that reworks the conventional archetype of mass
communication and rethinks how consumers might be managed. Drawing upon
Foucauldian theory that conceptualizes an active subject rather than a form of domination
that has often defined the use of power, I argue that this is a regime of casual, if not
“invisible” consumer governance that accommodates yet structures participatory agency;
self-effaces its own authority and intent through disinterested spaces and anti-
establishment formats; opens up the brand-text as a more flexible form; and democratizes
in favor of heterarchical collaboration. It is, in short, advertising that tries not to seem
like advertising. By studying the inspirations, machinations, and designs behind these
campaigns to uncover and map the institutional discourse and cultural logic at work, I
identify and analyze common themes of power and practice that animate otherwise
disparate advertising executions and help redefine media industries.
v
Table of Contents
I. Introduction: Buying into the Cool Sell 1
II. The Ambient Governance of Advertainment:
How Brands Co-Author Content 95
III. The Street Spectacle of Subculture Jamming:
How Brands Co-Opt Cool 143
IV. Buzz Agency and the Regime of Dialogue:
How Brands Conscript Conversation 197
V. Crowd-Source Marketing and the Freedom to Labor:
How Brands Commandeer Creativity 249
VI. Conclusion: Managing Agency in the Regime of Engagement 292
Appendices 320
Bibliography 326
1
Introduction:
Buying Into the Cool Sell
“Cool is the opiate of our time.” – Kalle Lasn (1999, p. 113)
For much of the 20th century, advertisers relied upon the conventional weaponry
of the mass media to deliver their commercial payload: newspapers, magazines, radio,
television, and billboards structured that information environment and routinely provided
the primary venues for the placement of paid advertising. Within that environment,
advertisers often jockeyed for attention in predictable, delimited contexts through
persuasive campaigns that could be clearly and openly identified as such, even as public
relations, a related field with similarly persuasive designs, pursued a very different course
of action upon others’ actions.
At the dawn of the 21st century, however, in response to changes in technology,
markets, commercial clutter and audience cynicism, that traditional model of advertising
continues to evolve and blur with its industrial cousin. Given those challenges and
linkages, the premium placed on generating publicity through alternative means, and the
broader theoretical struggle between power and agency, various sectors of the advertising
industry have explored new and re-imagined old techniques of communicating their
messages and managing consumer audiences – and in doing so, bleeding out promotion
from what are typically more confined, readily apparent media spaces. These innovations
and reinventions – many reflecting that ethos of public relations – proffer a solution to an
2
industry in turmoil by deploying crafty commercial appeals often intended to slide “under
the radar” of unsuspecting audiences.
This dissertation examines this most recent environment through a host of
evolving strategies for crafting the advertising message. It targets techniques so as to
uncover and map the institutional discourse and cultural logic that make newer patterns in
“invisible” consumer governance a necessary part of paid advertising: that is, the subtle
way in which desire is managed, consumption is activated, and subjects are disciplined to
shop has become, more than ever, an integral, concocted part of the commercial payload.
Because such governance is inescapably fraught with uncertainty and must be reactive to
subjects resistant to those invocations, the abstracted strategy of logic buttressing these
marketers’ efforts is emblematic of a Gramscian (1971) conception of power: “the
dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate
groups” such that the advertising project comes across as disinterested, solicitous and
responsive rather than an obvious attempt at manipulation (p. 182).
By exploring the practice of guerrilla marketing – the umbrella term I appropriate
to categorize an assortment of product placement, alternative ambient, word-of-mouth,
and consumer-generated approaches – we can better understand a contemporary media
environment where cultural producers like advertisers strategize and experiment with the
dissemination of information and the application of persuasion through increasingly
covert and outsourced flows. 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.
Description:YOUR AD HERE: THE COOL SELL OF GUERRILLA MARKETING Michael Serazio A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
