If you are a small upstart Guerrilla Marketing tactics are acceptable and often quite effective, but when a large company tries the same approach it fails pathetically.

Let’s look at two rebellious moves.  The co-CEOs of Research in Motion have both agreed to a salary of $1/year while they get their company back on top of their game.  This move failed miserably with most sane business people, it certainly didn’t inspire any confidence.  The problem at RIM was never executive compensation, it was always corporate strategy.  The $1 a year move was simply an attempt to distract detractors and was a sad sack attempt to show leadership.  This might have worked with a small upstart company or with a new incoming CEO taking the reigns but here it looked sad.

In terms of political marketing, an MP, Justin Trudeau resorted to calling a crown minister a shithead.  This was used as a marketing tactic to bring Mr. Trudeau some additional press and national news coverage.  I think the public is largely past this sort of thing and that instead of passion, which I guess the outburst was supposed to impress upon the public, I would hope that it showed the lack of maturity, intellect, and depth of this pathetic back bencher.

Canadians deserve better than CEOs disguising big stock holdings with low annual salaries as a means of keeping their jobs.  They also deserve MPs able to articulate an argument rather than calling their colleagues shitheads.  Shock value when you are already well established should fail.