Shock first, explain later — is this the future of marketing?

📱 Competition for eyeballs is high, thanks to shrinking attention spans and AI-generated marketing campaigns — businesses’ easy fix? Shock value. The past few months saw Egyptian coffee brand Cilantro send a series of cryptic text messages to thousands of customers. Some read “Go do your laundry,” and more ominously, “Turn off your camera.”

“Unprofessional, disrespectful, and irrelevant” were some of the accusations directed towards the brand. Angry customers took to social media to express their discontent with the text messages, which had, up until then, provided no context for their content. Even when the campaign was fully unveiled, many still felt that Cilantro’s marketing team missed the mark by crowding their inboxes with irrelevant (but startling) messaging with no apparent link to the brand’s offerings.

“A successful guerrilla marketing campaign is defined by disruption with purpose, not just attention for attention’s sake,” Nader Elhamy, founder and lead consultant at Toolbox Marketing Consulting, told us. In Elhamy’s view, a successful guerrilla campaign still needs to tie back to a brand’s positioning, values, and offerings, even if subtly.

Elhamy believes Cilantro checked all the boxes of a successful guerrilla marketing campaign — here’s why: “Over the past few years, Cilantro’s communication activities have been leaning into an archetype that is playful, daring, and kind of pushing the boundaries; a suitable positioning for a coffeeshop brand primarily targeting young people,” he tells us. That said, Elhamy agrees that some of the messages may have indeed been irrelevant, and for some demographics, condescending.

When the texts were revealed to be excerpts from user-generated content about embarrassing situations experienced over online calls, it all came together. According to Elhamy, despite the backlash over the initial phase of its deployment, the campaign managed to change the narrative from irritation to engagement, and from damage to impact.

Love it or hate it, the campaign got people talking, fulfilling its purpose. This begs the question: Should virality be the only metric of success? “Brands used to stand out by what they offered in terms of quality, color, taste, or price,” marketing expert and chairman of TSM Management Mohamed Galal told EnterpriseAM. “[Now] it’s all about emotional marketing and playing on psychology. To succeed, a brand has to be cognizant of who is buying their products and who their target customer is,” Galal adds, noting that the current marketing zeitgeist involves tailoring messaging around the consumer rather than the product.

Why? Because today’s consumers like it. Authenticity and honesty, markers of humanity amidst an AI-ridden world, are what consumers — particularly Gen Z and millennials — are looking for. When asked how far a brand should go with their marketing campaigns, Galal believes that the sky is the limit — while being mindful of cultural sensitivities, naturally. However, we would argue that the line between authenticity, shock value, and irrelevance is easily overstepped.

When would it not work? When creativity ignores context. The reason Cilantro’s campaign landed after a perceived bumpy start was because it tied back to the brand’s ethos and propensity for pushing boundaries. Which is to say, it stuck to its guns and trusted the process. If a different company with a different track record and brand image had launched the same campaign, it may not have won back customers’ good faith.

Why context matters: “One example that comes to mind is a famous soda campaign by an international brand, which faced huge criticism as a result of its timing,” Elhamy tells us. The campaign tagline was “khaleek ‘atshan,” or “stay thirsty,” launched shortly after the start of the genocide in Gaza. Gazans were facing food and water shortages, and many Egyptian consumers were already boycotting the US brand for its significant presence in Israel, making the messaging tone deaf and inflammatory. The bottom line? Know your customer, be mindful of the context, and play it smart. It’ll pay off.