4 Great PR Campaigns to Brighten Your February
As a bit of respite from all the doom and gloom following the Trump inauguration, we thought we’d lighten the mood by celebrating some great PR campaigns from the last month.
So, let’s start with an absolute shocker from Paramount Pictures.
Paramount Pictures
If you saw the original The Ring movie, there’s one scene that would have stuck with you.
To publicise the latest instalment in the horror franchise, called The Rings, the film’s iconic scene of protagonist Samara crawling out of the TV set was recreated in a TV showroom.
The set-up was simple. After being given a bit of sales patter, potential customers in a New York City electronics shop were left alone by an assistant. The actress who played that terrifying little girl then came crawling out of a hidden compartment behind a TV screen, scaring the hell out of unsuspecting shoppers.
People’s terrified reactions were caught on hidden cameras and shared online. To date, the footage has been viewed 320 million times across all channels, including 296 million views on Facebook in the first week, making it the most viewed Facebook video ever. In the US, it has been viewed more than 20 million times, with a media value of £1.8m.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, but made for a cracking PR stunt. You can see it for yourself here. If you dare.
Royal Caribbean
Let’s face it: January is hardly the greatest time of year. Christmas is a distant memory and the weather is pretty pants, which is why the timing of this PR campaign is so inspired.
The cruise company, Royal Caribbean, announced that it was looking to recruit an intern via Instagram to work on three of its cruise ships over the course of three weeks in June and July. The lucky recruit will get free food, drink and flights, and £3,000 in cash. Their role whilst on board, travelling across three oceans, will be a ‘hybrid between a photographer, documentary maker and storyteller’, which basically means taking stunning pictures and sharing them on Royal Caribbean’s Instagram account. Nice.
To enter, people had to head to Instagram and share their best travel picture, tagging @RoyalCaribbean and using the hashtag #ExtraordinaryExplorer.
This sort of campaign never gets old and always does well from a PR point of view. There’s already been significant coverage in the travel press and mainstream newspapers. The competition has just closed so we’ll keep an eye on this one to see what happens next.
Just Eat and Feeleys Chippy
If you’ve ever used Just Eat, the online app you can use to order food, you’ll know that you can add some comments to your order e.g. ‘knock quietly, child sleeping’ or helpful directions to find your middle-of-nowhere house.
One customer, who was feeling under the weather, decided to try her luck and see if she could get the delivery driver to stop en route and get her some medicine. In the comments section, she wrote ‘Will you please stop in the Spar on the way and get me some Benylin cold and flu tablets and I’ll give you the money. Only ordering food so I can get the tablets. I’m sick xx.’
The delivery driver – well – delivered, both the medication and her order, and the whole thing played out nicely in the media.
The good deed came to light when Feeleys posted an image of the receipt that the chippy received when the customer placed the order via the site.
Whether this was a stunt, or ‘real life’, it’s awesome PR for both the site and the chip shop.
Orchard Pig
Cider brand Orchard Pig ran a campaign on social media to make members of the public #AsHappyAsAPig by immortalising them as happy pigs in sh*t.
The campaign was designed to encourage positivity and make the public smile on Blue Monday. A number of ‘lucky pigs’ were also sent a hamper of cider and juice to accompany their caricatures, by the illustrator Gogden. Just what’s needed on supposedly the most depressing day of the year.
