When the Guerrilla Bites Back

Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to be able to participate as a panelist at the American Bar Association's Second Annual Legal Symposium on the World of Music, Film, Television and Sports, which was held at the W Hotel on Miami Beach. The name of this year's event was "From Hollywood to South Beach," and the specific panel I was a part of examined music and television around the world, with my input focusing mostly on the TV end of the spectrum. The entire thing was interesting and informative, to say the least, plus, hey, the Situation from Jersey Shore was there as one of the guest speakers, so you can't really argue with that kind of entertainment value. (For the record, he's a good guy and pretty sharp businessman.)

During our discussion, my panel managed to get on the topic of not just social media but guerrilla marketing and how a lot of celebrities and would-be celebrities -- as well as the outlets that promote them -- are making it work for them, and sometimes not work for them. I spoke up pretty loudly on this because it's a subject I happen to know quite a bit about, having worked with many clients who were both the beneficiary of guerrilla marketing and who suffered through some of the nastier pitfalls of it.

Obviously the benefit of a guerrilla marketing strategy, particularly for the up-and-coming artist, performer or entity, is that the tools to create it and bring it to fruition are available to anyone. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on this blog that thanks to the social media revolution, record companies have lost control of the ability to be kingmakers and the sole disseminators of musical product; well, guess who they lost it to -- you. Anyone can access the most powerful promotional tool in the world right now -- the Internet -- and if he or she knows how to make the proper connections can send a message or product all over the world instantly. The trick, though, is getting people to see that message once it's out there and turning it into a personal, professional or financial windfall. The idea behind guerrilla marketing is exactly what it sounds like: come in under the radar, strike fast, and make a lasting impression. Force people to sit up and take note. It used to be you needed an actual physical act to make your point, even in guerrilla marketing; now all you need is a computer and a Twitter, Facebook or YouTube account.

The problem, unfortunately, is that sometimes the guerrilla bites back.

What makes guerrilla marketing, especially through social media, such a touchy thing is that by its very nature it's organic; even if you've got your hands wrapped tightly around the message, product or image when you first inject it into the media bloodstream, once it goes viral it's very difficult to control. That can present a major problem. Take for example one of the quickest tools for information dissemination these days: Twitter. Millions are on it and it has the fastest "cause and effect" ratio of just about any social networking platform at the moment, meaning that it can take a single person, video clip, song or message and turn it into a worldwide sensation almost overnight. (Best example: Rebecca Black, whose silly little song Friday went from nothing, to inside joke, to biggest thing in the country within a matter of about 72 hours.) The problem with Twitter, though -- for people concerned with marketing, say, their personal image -- is that the platform allows for parody profiles, meaning that although it will mark the profile of an honest-to-God celebrity as a "Verified Account" it does allow other people to create phony profiles with that celebrity's name and likeness. If you happen to be the real celebrity, or anyone who doesn't want to see his or her image anywhere he or she doesn't want to see it, you can spend a ton of time using the legal system to play whack-a-mole with people pretending to be you and potentially be only somewhat successful at it.

On the other hand, Facebook, doesn't allow impostors; the site provides avenues that users can avail themselves of to combat "online identity theft." I have a client who, my firm found out, had 298 fake profiles on Facebook. They used his name, his image, everything. We reported each and every one of them to Facebook and the the site has taken care of it, but that's where the trouble comes in: Facebook is a form of guerrilla marketing and it's one you simply have to have these days if you want your brand to survive, draw eyes and make dollars, but you're not the only one who has access to the ability to transmit your image and once that image is out there roaming free it's tough to rein it in. Thanks to publicity and intellectual property rights -- which allow you to copyright and legally hold the deed to your image and creative efforts -- you can in theory stop the online theft of your identity and personal material, but the social media revolution has created a lot of gray area and some room for debate in court. Thankfully, 1996's Digital Millennium Copyright Act remains one of the most effective tools for combating copyright infringement on the Internet; it puts in the hands of intellectual property owners and attorneys like myself the power to issue take-down orders to those who are posting or disseminating infringing content.

But here's the real conundrum, and it kind of goes back to what I said earlier: the aim of guerrilla marketing is usually for your strategy to come off as somewhat anarchic, daring and beyond the rules -- the spirit of the Internet itself being revolutionary -- otherwise it won't work. But still, any promoter will tell you that strict control of the message is an absolute necessity. A perfect example of the paradox: You want the blogs and the Tumblr accounts and the Twitter users and the commenters to talk about you; you don't want them to defame you. But defame you and your message they occasionally will, and while there is legal action you can take -- and this kind of action has become de rigeur for a lot of celebrities these days -- tracking down offenders can occasionally feel like herding cats. I've had to do it many times and I've gotten very good at it, but that doesn't mean it's an easy thing.

The trick is to make sure your guerrilla campaign strikes a delicate balance between bold-and-inventive and smart-and-calculated. It has to be new school enough to catch the attention of the social media universe but be backed by old school savvy and a firm knowledge of what your intellectual property and publicity rights are before you even make the first move.

Because when the guerrilla bites you, it bites hard.

And that's not even getting into the kind of legal trouble you can open yourself up to when your real world guerrilla marketing campaign ends like this.