Publicity stunts are an excellent way to bring attention to a brand, and are particularly valuable for small businesses who lack significant PR budgets. Doing something unusual, entertaining or shocking and associating it with your brand can bring a huge return on investment, particularly if the stunt is recorded on video and subsequently goes viral.
However, PR stunts don’t always work well (as in the case of a man who interrupted the Olympics by leaping from the diving board wearing a tutu with the words GoldenPalace.com written on his chest). Good stunts must not only elicit a positive emotional reaction, but the stunt must also relate to the campaign in order to leverage that reaction for the campaign. Here are five examples of well executed PR stunts.
1. Sky Atlantic: Fortitude
Fortitude is a new television series about a small community located in the arctic, where the weather is perpetually frosty and polar bears are plentiful. In order to promote this series, Sky Atlantic decided to build a highly realistic, 8 foot polar bear, animated by two skillful puppeteers. The polar bear was then set upon London to walk around and greet the public. People were absolutely mesmerised when they saw a realistic polar bear roaming around the city and the underground! This stunt was particularly good because the polar bear related so well to the series Sky Atlantic was trying to promote.
2. The Facebook arm tattoo
In 2011, a story hit CNN and Fox News that a Dutch tattoo artist, Dex Moelker, had tattooed one of his clients with profile pictures of 152 online friends. The pictures accompanying the story showed the client’s arm covered in tiny portraits. Although stories about people destroying their appearances with tattoos always tend to go viral, in this case it turned out to be an intelligently executed PR stunt. Pretty Social is a Dutch company that sells bags and posters featuring pictures of Facebook friends, and they claimed responsibility for orchestrating the stunt which gained huge amounts of engagement online.
3. An ‘ant-sized’ movie trailer
In the film industry, trailers are used to build excitement about upcoming releases by showing excerpts in a compelling montage. However, with Disney’s movie, Ant Man, they decided to create a mini-trailer (literally) with the intention of building anticipation for the actual trailer. The daring move to create a trailer so small that only an ant could view it was a resounding success. It received high engagement on YouTube which helped to build Ant Man into a smash at the box office.
4. Snickers for Jeremy Clarkson
When stories started circulating last year about Jeremy Clarkson having a meltdown on the set of Top Gear, brands used this as an opportunity for newsjacking. One stunt that gained a lot of attention was performed by Snickers, who sent Clarkson a case of Snickers bars along with their brand slogan: “You’re not you when you’re hungry”. Although this PR Stunt generated great attention on Twitter, it’s important to proceed with caution when trying to newsjack a serious event which involves criminal assault allegations!
5. The world’s most disgusting Easter egg
While most brands market their products to be as appealing to a wide range of people as possible, Marmite has truly capitalised on the polarised reaction to their products. In fact, this polarisation is now the cornerstone of Marmite’s marketing campaigns, with the slogan: “You either love it or you hate it”. Clearly not afraid of any negative reactions, Marmite made the daring move to mix their polarising product with milk chocolate in the form of an edible egg, just in time for Easter. While this combination sounds truly terrible, a stunt as daring as this cannot help but breed intrigue. Apparently, the eggs made pretty good sales and they’ll be back this year!
Tags: engagement, Newsjacking, PR stunts
