Guerrilla Marketing At It’s Finest

Pretend for a moment that you are the owner of a business that is considered to be less than environmentally friendly. You want to transition your business to becoming green, but don’t want to lose the money that you have invested in you current business. What do you do?

This is the dilemma that Milton Grin, owner of a Valero gas station in Kansas City, Missouri faces. Grin desperately wants to get out of his current business and attract attention to a new venture selling electric cars.

Using a page right out of the Guerrilla Marketing handbook, Milton Grin took advantage of the customer attention and media coverage to promote his efforts. For a single day, Grin dropped the price on regular gasoline to $1.98. As customers streamed into his station to take advantage of the half-price gas, they were given a good view of 3 electric vehicles that Grin had placed the service islands.

“We will no longer support the oil and gas industry,” Grin said. “The electric car industry is what I believe in and I personally own and drive electric cars.”

Milton Grin’s message was simply this: You need gas? You’re going to drive somewhere and wait in line. You need electricity? Just plug it in.

It worked. In fact, it worked so well that Grin had to cut the sale short due to the influx of traffic, which stretched out for nearly 3 miles.

By briansrapier

[via AutoBlogGreen]