Book Burning Party: Film Guerrilla Marketing


To be successful in the digital age, storytelling must break through.

There is so much content competing for the user's attention.

In the Old World, marketing dollars were key - and money and traditional marketing techniques still have their place.

But microbudget storytellers - especially those with a useful or entertaining message that can be spread via social media - are also succeeding in getting attention using techniques that don't require a lot of money or traditional ads.

The Save the Troy Library: Book Burning Party campaign is just one (great) example.

Are there rules or guiding principles that a guerrilla marketer - perhaps a microbudget filmmaker with a story to share - can use?

Here are 4 lessons that digital strategist Jasper Visser has identified for making stories that spread. These principles were shared in an Oct. 11th, 2012 blogpost that uses the Troy Library: Book Burning Party as an example of the kind of story "that stands out, captures people’s attention and gets them to act":

"1. The story is really unique and unexpected. Unexpected content is one of the three ingredients for a successful viral according to Kevin Allocca in his great TED talk on what makes videos go viral on YouTube, a lesson that also works for other forms of content.


2. The story is told in the public space, in ‘active communities’. The streets, Facebook, general media: all the places where the story happens are easily accessible for most people and designed to foster discussion. Unlike your own website or Tuesday night discussion group people come to these places for stories and are, therefore, more likely to respond to them.

3. The story is about the audience. The most important lesson I took from Nancy Duarte’s brilliant book Resonate is to treat your audience as a hero whenever you tell them something. People should not only be involved and directly addressed, it should be their story, the thing they are telling, to make it stand out. People usually listen to themselves.

4. The story helps create real life connections, has a physical component... I believe each great story in the digital age needs a physical element to really turn people from simply interested into highly enthusiastic."

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