PR Stunts: The Risks & Rewards (with 8 Examples)

With the potential to be strokes of genius when they come off and career suicide when they don’t, PR stunts are a high stakes game. So:

• Why do them and when?
• What are the risks and rewards?
• How do you get them right?

Here are the answers, together with 8 of the best and worst PR stunts to learn from (chosen by us).

A PR stunt (often called a publicity stunt) is an event or activity that has been typically designed to grab attention.

There are eight main reasons why brands, companies or individuals might want to do them:

1. To cut through the noise, which is increasingly difficult with so much media content and social media chatter out there.
2. Stand out at events. Stunts can be a useful way to draw people to a stand and distinguish a business from other exhibitors.
3. Maybe a brand wants to quickly make an impact with a particular market or audience.
4. Some companies do publicity stunts to upstage a competitor – for instance doing a stunt at a sports event where a rival is a major sponsor.
5. PR stunts are also a great way to create excitement, perhaps as part of a launch.
6. If a brand wants to shape or quickly change perceptions or hammer home a key message a PR stunt may be turned to.
7. By their very nature PR stunts can often be seen as a bit disruptive or brave. Inevitably they particularly suit brands which want a shorthand way to communicate that boldness.
8. Lastly, a date or occasion may simply lend itself to PR stunts, and that becomes the main driver.  Sure, the business or brand has some other communications objectives that the stunt’s fulfilling, but if the date or occasion didn’t present itself, the company would possibly not do a stunt. For instance, think about all the PR stunts we see on Valentines or April Fools’ Day, from companies that don’t do stunts at any other time!

Missing the mark. The major risk with PR stunts is that they fall flat. You spend months and lots of money preparing your stunt, only for the whole thing to not quite come off.  For instance, the audience doesn’t see it or take much notice of it. It perhaps underwhelms. As a result, the media doesn’t pick up on it, the buzz isn’t created, and the budget is blown.

Going wrong. Worse still is the stunt which simply goes wrong and in so doing communicates a negative message. Think Elon Musk smashing the window of his cybertruck at its launch. You’ve all the oomph, attention and profile of the stunt suddenly pushing out the wrong message – disaster!

Misjudged. Sometimes nothing goes wrong with a stunt but the whole enterprise has simply been misjudged.  Celebrities can be particularly prone to this. They are removed from real people too much and simply don’t see how others will perceive their ‘brilliant’ idea.  A classic example of this is the band U2 which inexplicably thought people would love it if they forced their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, onto 500m users of Apple’s iTunes in the form of an automatic download. Lead singer Bono was still apologising for the stunt some eight years later!

Unforeseen events are another big risk. A PR stunt can be a brilliant idea but if a major story breaks – someone high profile resigns or dies, there’s a disaster, a major world event or a scandal – the stunt will be knocked off the media agenda. It’s simply subsumed by bigger, more important events.

Stunts are time sensitive. If something major like this, happens on the day, it’s very difficult to do anything about it.  Unlike a news story which you can repackage and reissue, with a stunt, you can’t simply resurrect and reissue it when there’s a quieter news day. The moment is usually lost.

Practical things. Depending on the nature of a PR stunt, things you can’t control (such as the weather) can be a risk.

Message missed. In all the drama of the stunt, there’s a real risk that the stunt mechanic becomes the story, and the actual intended message is missed.

Too much expected. The final risk is that people expect too much from a publicity stunt.  One PR stunt does not make a whole reputation. While a stunt may put you on the map, it will take much more than this to keep you there.

Career damage. There’s also a risk to marketers that’s worth mentioning. If a big expensive PR stunt doesn’t work, it can really damage a marketer’s career.  That’s because such stunts are high profile; senior colleagues within a company will hear about them ahead of time. If the stunt fails to land, those colleagues (including sometimes the Board) will hear about it. They’ll conveniently forget that they would have sung your praises from the rafters had the stunt come off. They’ll now see you as associated with a failure. Worse still, you’re someone with poor judgement, who wastes budget.

The flip side of all this doom and gloom is that stunts that work can:

• Reach a large audience
• Have a big impact
• Secure the interest of hard-to-reach media
• Be memorable
• Communicate a message
• Change perceptions

With so much to win or lose, here are our 10 key rules for running a successful PR stunt?

• Have a clear objective – winning a marketing award, impressing the board or ‘doing something different’ are not good enough reasons
• Be clear about the goals at the outset – what success will feel like and how it be measured.
• Carefully think through the idea – view it from all sides – really stress test it.
• Spend twice as long thinking about the risks as the rewards and have a plan for mitigating them
• Make things really work hard – it’s all too easy to think that the idea is where all the inspirational thinking is done. But don’t stop there. Have a detailed plan for milking the idea. Spend more time on this than on the idea itself.
• Run the idea past someone you trust – if yours is the loudest voice in room and you are surrounded by yes people, move into another room! It’s all too easy for everyone to get swept along by your enthusiasm.  You need to run your publicity stunt idea past someone who isn’t afraid to challenge your thinking or tell you it’s not that clever, original or interesting.
• Think really carefully about the messaging – how will the message not be lost, could the idea be seen in a negative light, appear tone deaf, backfire?
• Money doesn’t equal creativity – and don’t assume the more you spend the better the idea will be. A PR stunt doesn’t have to break the bank to be clever. Indeed, some of the neatest publicity stunts haven’t cost much at all.
• If the stunt is an expensive one and is going to swallow up more than 20% of your marketing budget, don’t do it.
• If the stunt involves a partner, make sure they can’t take all the limelight.

Enough of the theory.  So how does this all play out in practice? Well to show you, here’s our take on 8 examples of PR stunts (and whether we think they were hits or misses).

Airbnb’s ‘Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse’ – Hit

Airbnb went ‘all in’ with this idea.  To celebrate the release of the ‘BARBIE’ movie, it listed ‘Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse” for people to book and stay in.

Located in Malibu, California, it was made to mimic Barbie’s ‘Dreamhouse,’ with the trademark pink decor, retro fittings, and of course the giant pink slide.

Spaces were limited, adding even more buzz and exclusivity to this once in a lifetime experience. The stunt was designed to capitalise on the excitement around the movie’s release.  But the fact the house was properly bookable ensured that AirBnB was still central to this BARBIE inspired story.

Extinction Rebellion’s ‘sinking house’ – Hit

Lots of PR stunts have involved something being floated down the Thames – with mixed success. So, it’s certainly not an original idea.  But we applaud the way Extinction Rebellion genuinely wrapped the Thames into a stunt in order to get an important message across. By floating a “sinking house” down the River it highlighted the impact of rising sea levels.

To ensure maximum global visual appeal the replica suburban house was floated in front of London’s iconic Tower Bridge. A move designed to send an SOS to the government – and the world – on climate inaction.

Gregg’s Valentine’s Day package – Hit

Love them or loath them there have been masses of Valentines Day-based PR stunts over the years. But one we ‘have the hots for’ was delivered by Greggs’ back in 2018.

The bakery chain got blanket national coverage by announcing its very special Valentine’s Day package. For just £15 lucky couples who snapped up tickets were treated to a candlelit dinner consisting of four courses of Greggs’ finest fare, a bottle of prosecco, candles and even roses.

The humorous, tongue in cheek campaign that promoted the pulling power of a steak bake was playful like the Gregg’s brand and hit just the right note with its audience.

Carlsberg’s beer dispensing poster – Hit

Danish brewer Carlsberg has long traded on its ‘If Carlsberg did…….probably the best larger in the world’ messaging.  So, when looking to hammer this home to a fresh audience in a fresh way it came up with the beer dispensing poster.

Located near the old Truman Brewery in the East End, the poster was emblazoned with the slogan, “Probably the best poster in the world.”  This riffed brilliantly on the brand’s famous hook, capturing lots of media and social media attention in the process…cheers!

Galt’s Strictly Come Dancing launch – Hit

Stunts don’t need to be confined to consumer brands.  To create stand out at a B2B show, we’ve helped toy brand Galt use a number of stunts over the years. To mark the launch of its Dazzling Dancers Sequins craft kit in 2015, we kitted Strictly Come Dancing stars Kristina Rihanoff and Aliona Vilani in replica sequin dresses to bring the craft kit’s designs to life. A well timed photocall on press day had hordes of media on the stand and a branded ‘selfie’ frame encouraged people to join in the fun.  Masses of media coverage followed but most importantly, trade buyer traffic onto the stand went through the roof.

Build-A-Bear’s ‘Pay Your Age’ – Miss

You underestimate the impact of a PR stunt at your peril as retail company Build-A-Bear Workshop learned the hard way.

It had a seemingly brilliant idea, which it called ‘Pay Your Age.’  The idea was that children buying bears in stores in the UK or US on a particular day would only pay the same amount of money as their age. For example, a five-year-old, would only pay £5 for their bear. So far, so furry and fun.  However, Build-A-Bear didn’t bank on their little stunt going viral and more than half a million people turning out at their stores, many queuing for over 8 hours.

Build-A-Bear quickly scrabbled for a solution – turning all new customers away with a £15 voucher. The stunt left the public feeling decidedly grizzly!

U2’s Apple iTunes incident – Miss

A classic example of not thinking through how an idea will look has to be U2’s Apple iTunes debacle. The band inexplicably thought it’d be a good idea to automatically download their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, onto 500m iTunes users accounts.

Force-feeding your music onto the audience is never going to end well and it didn’t!  It suggested an arrogance (of course everyone will want our music), which seemed to annoy almost everyone – even fans!  It was presumptuous and intrusive. As one wag on social media put it ‘Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.’

What’s more the album wasn’t easy to remove.  Apple had to create a special remove tool to do the job. Ouch!

Burger King’s Whopper ‘Sacrifice’ – Miss

While it gathered masses of media exposure back in 2009, The Whopper Sacrifice was a miss in our book. The idea was that in exchange for a free Whopper, you would be encouraged to delete 10 friends on your Facebook account.  On paper the campaign was a clever way to poke fun at the superficial nature of online friendships and the value of a Whopper. However, the reality was that friends could see who had deleted them and arguments and bad feelings quickly ensued.  Not ideal for the brand to be positioned as the burger that turns friends to enemies.

While PR stunts can be absolutely brilliant, there’s plenty of ways to get them wrong. So, we always recommend you work closely with your PR agency to get them just right.

Want to find out more? Get in touch with us at susannah@energypr.co.uk.