Top 10 PR and marketing stunts and campaigns of February 2015

By Rich Leigh on Monday, March 2, 2015

First up, as fans of (or somebody paid to show something of an interest in) creative stunts and campaigns, you might appreciate this blog post here, featuring the slides of a talk I gave last week at Bournemouth University entitled ‘Creative Campaigns: An Insider’s Guide‘.

I looked at what good campaigns have in common, a few of my favourites and pitfalls to avoid.

(Congratulations to Kelly Phelps, Ben Sawyers and Liss Bult for their winning idea in the workshop. Give them a follow by clicking their names, PR Land – that’s the future of the industry right there).

Secondly, congratulations to Houston PR’s Inderdeep Gill for winning this month’s £50 contributor prize for having written this month’s best written post, kindly offered up by Smoking Gun PR (we’ll be in touch).

All that said – let’s get into it, shall we?

Here, in reverse order and based solely on the number of unique views each post received, are the top ten PR and marketing campaigns throughout February 2015:

10. Brands ride wave of #thedress phenomenon – post by Ciaran McCormick

Brand responses to the thing February 2015 will go down in history for – that bloody dress. The best (and most obvious, which is no bad thing) PR response to it all was the dressmaker announcing it would be releasing a white and gold version, too.

9. Virtual reality gives music fans chance to be onstage with Kasabian

An immersive virtual reality/360 campaign, headed up by a client of mine. Don’t let that disclosure put you off – this post is in the top ten on merit, due to its use of 360 audio and visuals, optimised for either the Samsung Gear VR or your browser.

8. Roses are red, Violets are Blue; a Valentine’s Day Stunt involving Waterloo – post by Hope & Glory’s Don Ferguson

South West Trains renamed stations in this Valentine’s Day announcement board stunt. Waterloo became ‘Waterlove’, amongst others.

7. Pancake portraits as Samsung celebrate ‘Pancake Day’ – post by Craig Knowles

A nice food-as-art campaign featuring famous faces – with a personalised twist by way of creating social media followers’ faces in pancakes, too. All to promote Samsung hobs, apparently, though you could be forgiven for missing that.

6. Domino’s release ‘The Tummy Translator’ app – post by Jordan Smith

Have you ever wanted an app that translated your hunger pangs into the ‘perfect’ pizza? Domino’s has JUST the thing.

5. Pay with ‘high-fives, selfies and hugs’ at McDonald’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq2Sm2XGv_s

Fairly self-explanatory this. I preferred Ronald’s recent ‘pay with rock, paper, scissors’ effort, which seemed to make for a less awkward time all-round.

4. Real money hidden in 80 selected Monopoly sets – post by Craig Knowles

LOVE. THIS.

A product-first campaign where, in short, a few lucky sods will buy a Monopoly set including actual money.

3. B&Q staff told to ‘prepare for increase in demand for cable ties’ in 50 Shades ‘leaked’ memo stunt

One of those ‘leaked memos’ that were PR popular a year or two back, telling staff of hardware retailer B&Q to prepare for an increase in cable tie sales as a likely consequence of filthy Fifty Shades movie fans. Funny, timely and impressively, the PRs behind it managed to get a couple of media bumps out of the same story by outing themselves.

2. A pop up cuddle cafe is coming to London – post by Houston PR’s Inderdeep Gill

The second physical-contact-for-payment campaign in here this month (well, it was Valentine’s Day), this one from McVitie’s biscuits. In short, visitors had the chance to drink tea, eat biscuits and take a load off in exchange for hugs.

1. Unsuspecting public given Disney surprise as Mickey and Co. set up shop