Guerrilla Marketing Works. How It Saved My Life, Opened Doors for Me, Made Me Both a Brand and Enemy, Earned Me a Guerrilla Marketing Guru Status.

Without any much formal marketing education except a marketing course I took as a part of my project management course, I have helped many companies and business achieve great, sometimes unbelievable marketing success and improved the marketing knowledge, skills and capabilities of many open-minded traditional marketers in Zimbabwe. Some high profile people in business and the corporate world conferred me a marketing guru status. Many in the business and corporate worlds associated with guerrilla marketing. At the same time, I have become an "enemy" to some people in the traditional marketing fraternity because they feel that I am a challenge to their brand of marketing.

It all started when I returned to Zimbabwe from the UK where I studied for my M.Sc. Degree in Environmental Technology and came back to Zimbabwe hoping to quickly find opportunities that suited academic background and past experience (Geohydroenvironmental science and Pollution, Waste and Waste Water Management Engineering). The economy was in a very bad state and the environment sector was severely depressed and I struggled to find income earning opportunities using my education and experience in the country. I decided to use my transferrable experience and skills. I ventured into corporate world and general economy initially offering training and strategic planning facilitation.

Ever since being a high school, I have always read very widely in different subjects outside my formal education disciplines. I ventured into disciplines such as business, psychology, thinking, marketing, leadership, marketing, sales, management, strategy, thinking, emotions, performance, success, self-help and other disciplines. I have my own growing library of books.

My training programs and my strategic planning facilitation attracted immediate praise and popularity by the clients that I served. The problem is I needed to rich out to more people to get more business and I did not have a good cashflow to feed any serious marketing. Guerrilla Marketing came to my rescue.

I bumped into Guerrilla Marketing on the internet in late 1990s when I was still formally employed and immediately fell in love with the subject. I immediately started seriously reading about it and getting notes and copies not for anything but Just interested. I was more attracted to the mindset issues and the way Jay, or father of Guerrilla Marketing marketed and delivered it.

Finding myself in a tight financial corner, I decided to go Guerilla and developed and implemented my Guerrilla Marketing Strategy and Plan. This simple act ignited a marketing firestorm. Without paying any money my seminars and workshops started appearing in the newspapers and attracted huge attendances from around Zimbabwe.

At one point I created a business seminar. So I went to see a new friend of mine who was Sunday Mail editor (the late Augustine Moyo) and explained to him I had this business seminar to run and wanted publishing but had no money for an advert. He said while he could not do anything about putting a proper advert he could write a story about it in the Sunday Mail. So he took me to their photographer to have a photo taken and then he asked me to write a short about the event and email it to him.

The Sunday before the week of my business seminar, I was shocked with the number of calls I received from people wanting to attend the business conference. I latter discovered that Augustine had made my story the main attraction right on the first page of Sunday Mail with my face right there.

I also received a call from journalists who wanted to cover the conference including one from ZBC TV. The conference was a huge success, with participants from around Zimbabwe (Remember I had talked about a seminar and Augustine instead pitched it as a conference! Genius Marketing)

The ZBC Television Crew that came was headed by a young man of my age called Maxwell Kanhema. He interviewed a sample of the delegates and then finally myself. The conference was on the main news that evening.

We became friends with Maxwell and one day he asked me to escort him to his workplace (ZBC offices Pockets Hill.) While there we passed through the Radio Section where Max introduced me to someone called Rodney Ruwende. When he asked me what I do I introduced myself as business consultant. Then he told me he was The Bureau Chief and had a program he hosted called Business Talk. I asked him what they talked about and he said they did some business reviews and some analysis. I suggested to him the idea of also providing a bit of business education but in the form of conversations. Rodney was open-minded enough to try the idea. He suggested that we start by making it pre-recorded.

I am sure Rodney had grossly underestimated what I could do, so it helped because the very first recorded shook him. Maxwell latter told me that Rodney was surprised with my performance. That first recording attracted a huge interest and it became a regular show that we ran one hour every week for two straight years and then 30 minutes for a week.

In the show we covered all the critical subjects and disciplines that go into business, from marketing to sales, to organisations , to performance. Then ran a marketing series where we discussed marketing in general. Then we moved one gear up and ran a Guerrilla Marketing Series. This one became the most popular series of the Business Talk program. It built my name and raised my popularity and connected me with many key people and big names in Zimbabwe's business community. I became a marketing guru overnight and started getting some marketing training opportunities. Rodney give me the nick-name Commander In Chief of Guerrilla Marketing.

The Ruthless Marketing Series was also great because it connected me with my Nyaradzo Founder Phillip Mataranyika who then became a very close brother of mine who did a lot of things for me behind the scenes. He loved Ruthless Marketing so much that he ran a seminar for his top management team at Wild Geese. Phillip is a business, entrepreneurship and strategy genius!

Jillian Rusike and The Zimbabwes Marketers Association

Business Talk connected me with Jillian Rusike who is still today a personal friend of mine. Then he was working as a marketing manager at Fidelity Funeral Services. We became friends and I used to visit his offices and had some conversations. Jillian was at that moment restless and wanted to leave Fidelity. At one of our meetups I suggested that we set up an association for Zimbabwe's marketers. He agreed to the idea and I emailed him a draft constitution. When I checked later Jillian told me that he had already set up the association with her other colleagues (he left me out but I suspect it was not his idea but he was influenced by his traditional-minded colleagues who may have felt uncomfortable with someone without formal academic marketing qualification being at the core of Zimbabwe's marketing fraternity.) This issue hurt me but I let it go. We are still very good friends with Jillian.

Despite all the issues, I was the inaugural guest speaker at the hugely successful Marketers' Association Official Launch at Cresta Masasa Hotel in Harare.

To be continued.

The next installment I will talk about the following;

·?????? Simon Bere Becomes an Enemy to Some in The Guerrilla Marketing Fraternity

·?????? The Guerrilla Marketing Versus Traditional Marketing Tiff.

·?????? The Fierce Intellectual Battle and The Marketing Indaba

·?????? Simon Bere in Marketing: The Future and The Present

·?????? Advances in Guerrilla Marketing and Its Offshoots

·?????? Simon Bere Marketing Seminars, Events, Presentations, Training and Education Programs

Guerrilla marketing works. It worked for me. It works for everyone. It will work for you.

Long live Guerrilla Marketing. Rest In Peace JCL. You Will Always Be Loved and Remembered.

[email protected] +263-77-444-74-38

?Simon Bere, 2024

?