Create brand desire and influence, not commodity.

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Harris: Many of your client projects involve creating street teams, street theater performances, graffiti campaigns and screen projections. These campaigns blur the lines between marketing an entertainment project and becoming one in and of itself. How do you measure the success of these programs? And how do you gain support from your clients for these techniques, which could take a much longer span of time to see any results?

Leifer: I think brands are waking up to the fact that the longer, more subtle play and positioning of their offering is essential for success where 30,000 ads barrage a consumer a day and quite often traditional advertising is filtered out if it's not relevant to a certain target. Consumers are ever more fragmented, and it has become increasingly difficult to drive sales with homogenized messaging that tries -- and often fails -- to speak to multiple segments simultaneously. We start with focusing in on certain segments, making sure to gain resonance with them, and then we try to turn them into brand evangelists, decreasing marketing expenditures and increasing ROI.

All campaign success and results are measured off of what the client wants to accomplish and an ROI determination. After all, non-traditional marketing is a business that needs to be evaluated and compared to traditional advertising methods. 

For example, some brands, in particular more affluent luxury ones like Helio and BMW, need to position their brand as exclusive. By buying that product, you gain entrance into a limited club. So, the communication strategy isn't about getting a sale for the first six months, but rather building the desire and solvency of the brand, so that people seek it out and want to be associated with it instead of just creating a commodity.

Harris: How do you determine the best marketing strategy or tactics for use with a particular product? Can you give an example of a product for which you chose a specific marketing approach-- and why you chose this approach?"

Leifer: The best strategy comes down to what the end goal is for the client. You can't really put the cart before the horse.

For example, to break a new alcohol brand, you could use a stealth production association with music celebrities and people in their circles. Such a campaign comes down to hitting a select number of the music key influencers, surrounding them with the brand and to trying to get them to adopt the brand organically, instead of just paying them to do such. So, with music stars, you can give their limo drivers a payout to make sure your client's drink is the beverage of choice in the limo going into the city; you can pay the sound engineer and studio manager to have it in the booth at the recording studios; place it at the VIP tables at the A-list clubs, et cetera. Document the celebrities drinking it and having it at their tables and then give that out to the wire services and buzz it up online on the blogs and other places. 

Harris: A key demographic in entertainment is the youth market, which has a great deal of sophistication when it comes to the use of emerging interactive technology. What advice do you have for getting on the radar of Generation Y? How does this differ from the strategies you use for other cultural and subcultural segments of the audience?

Leifer: Do less not more. Be the Puma stripe on the down-low vs. the self-congratulatory Nike swoosh saying "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me." Be a good storyteller and make sure that your story has a place that Gen Y can fit into. Alter the story for different Gen Y segments, but get the people from those segments to be the storytellers. Be authentic-Gen Y can smell something false and know it. Be brief. Speak in soundbytes. Keep it real.
 
Harris: Tell us about an interactive campaign you particularly enjoyed working on.

Leifer: Oh there are so many. A recent one that made me laugh quite a bit was the online direct-to-influencer campaign we did for Konami's Coded Arms, for the PSP. We designed a co-branded interface for a flash-based tool, which allows users to shoot at and blow up any website and then take pictures of it and post it with their commentary on that particular website. The co-branding allowed the webmasters to upload their logo onto their site, so that it seemed as if they were offering it to their users. So, along with some quality hosting rewards and contest prizes, many target webmasters and bloggers ran contests on their sites where they had their users surf the web and blow up or shoot up particular celebrity or political pictures and then post them online. People really liked using the tool to express their comments visually about people and subjects. It was amazing, shocking, saddening and revealing to see how many people participated.

Harris: What other companies do you think are doing a good job of advertising in the interactive space?

Leifer: YouTube, Indieclick. 3Jane, Suicide Girls, Flavorpill. Carat,  Konami, Alliance Network Group, Burger King, Heavy, Swirl, Altterrain, Street Virus, Puma, Scion and many others.

Harris: What do you see as the next big thing in interactive?

Leifer: Well when I think interactive, I think an active vs. passive engagement and experience. 

So, in that regard, environmental installations and 3-D holographic skyscraper projections are really compelling.

With new audio projection and pinpoint sound technology, brands can project a waterfall and cast the sound of the waterfall in a designated area. That means that all entrances to stores, restaurants, record shops, clubs and more can be altered for new experiences.

In the more traditional sense, interactive has also come to be known as new media. Now in this field, I think the convergence between online video and broadcast is definitely evolving, and it's turning into a land grab of unique sites and the race to find ways of filtering out all the trash. That tug-of-war is going to be really interesting to participate within and observe.

If mobile simplifies what it is offering, instead of just digitally accessorizing, then it could really be adopted in the United States. There really aren't that many underground screensavers and animations that are user created yet. 
 
Harris: What's up next for guerilla PR?

Leifer: Well I've been reading a lot about how brands are pushing their larger advertising agencies to acquire or merge with companies like guerilla or they may pull some if not all of their business. I'm open to having those discussions to potentially become that solution. Outside of that, Guerilla is going to continue to do quality work and have fun doing it.