Guerrilla Social Marketing from Braden Social. Developed in 2015, our Guerrilla Marketing Street Promos + Social Campaigns made the news. Swim Against the Stream™
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising approach that employs unorthodox methods to draw in customers and create buzz. In 2015, we introduced Guerrilla + Social, combining the experiential aspects of in-person guerrilla marketing with the viral potential of social media content — to create memorable campaigns that connect with customers and stand out amid the clutter of conventional advertising. It’s one of the ways we Swim Against the Stream™
“Once we did the #BookieTakeover of our Twitter account, he kind of took off. A lot of people were interested in what we were doing.” — Michael Woytowich, The Student Book Store
Braden Social’s Guerrilla Social Marketing was born in 2015 while working with the Student Book Store. The store’s mascot, Bookie the Bear, had been all but forgotten.
We wanted to resurrect his presence on social media by having him take over the store’s Twitter account for the week in #BookieTakeover. For that we’d stage photos and have the mascot take unconventional photos like Bookie diving into a dumpster, riding the Nittany Lion statue or sitting among students in the Hub.
Bookie even encountered The Nittany Lion himself, who tweeted a photo of the encounter, though later deleted it, likely after discovering The Student Book store directly competes with the Penn State Bookstore.
On any given day, you can see a near innumerable number of strange things on campus, from students unicycling to class, to a guy in a red sweatshirt screaming at you about your sins, and even a girl putting a hat on a squirrel. Recently, however, some students may have seen something even stranger: a human-sized blue bear walking around campus committing atrocities like ruining Oreos, and eating food at the HUB while staring aimlessly into space.
It certainly made a mark in our community, generating buzz in the streets, on social media and in the news. Onward State, the student-run news site, picked up the story shortly thereafter in Bookie The Bear: The Student Book Store’s Resurrected (And Creepy) Mascot by Mike Reisman.
The National Association of College Stores, NACS, also spotted our promo and recognized how The Student Book Store had updated its old mascot. In Campus Marketplace, Student Store Brings Back Bookie the Bear by Dan Angelo
Braden Social has executed Guerrilla Social promotions for restaurants, retailers, public transit agencies and now grocery delivery services. Clients including Harpers in downtown State College; AMTRAN in Altoona, Pa; and more. Featuring Instagram photo frames; Halloween accessories; a wooden whale for Vineyard Vines mascot, Whaley; a giant Weis grocery bag; a man-sized Tomato costume; thousands of impressions and experiences for clients, fans and our agency.
Braden Social 