In their book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guerilla Marketing, Colleen Wells and Susan Drake document numerous guerilla marketing ideas gone wrong. Stunt marketing, in particular, can do real damage to a company’s customer retention strategy if it’s done poorly. Snapple realized this when it erected a 25-foot-tall frozen treat in New York City on the first day of summer. It quickly melted and flooded Union Square, requiring firefighters to come and hose down the sticky streets.

The authors devote a chapter to stealth marketing, another guerilla marketing strategy, and their message is clear: don’t do it. Wells gives the example of how Vespa hired models to ride its scooters around cities like Los Angeles and Houston. Some passersby, hoping to get to know the Vespa riders, would ask for their phone numbers. The Vespa drivers would oblige, then ride off. But when they tried the number, it would connect them to a Vespa dealership, not the scooter driver. “So you’re humiliating them,” Wells says.

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