The Flat Future of the Publicity Stunt

Time and again PR professionals love to turn to an old favorite - the publicity stunt. I use the word publicity here rather than public relations because there is a distinction between two. However, they are certainly inter-related.

Everyone likes a good stunt. And who can blame us? In our time-starved world, content that is bite-sized, shareable and fun is often holy. That's why publicity stunts, a tactic, work best when they fit into a larger PR strategy and convey a bigger message.

In the past stunts were cost prohibitive. And to some degree they still are. If you want to build the world's biggest [insert product here] and unleash it in Times Square for all to see on Good Morning America, it will cost you. Plus there's no guarantee for success. This is driving more products and services to try their hand at hatching online publicity stunts.

Web-based stunts have been a staple of online culture since the Internet became a mass medium during the mid-late 1990s. Viral marketing, if you think about it, is really just a glorified PR stunt. Memes are stunts that we create without the help of marketers.

The web, however, is flat - especially with the dawn of Web 2.0 insta-publishing tools. This raises the bar for cleverness substantially. PR pros are competing with everyone. This is why I've heard some have described launching a viral video as a moonshot. For every Subservient Chicken there are thousands of viral marketing programs nobody ever heard of.

A smart approach is to think simple and small. Target a niche, rather than big mainstream audience, and come up with something really different. The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot of time and money to do so. You can use off the shelf tools and an acquired knowledge of online culture.

For an example of this, check out what Scott Heiferman at Meetup launched last week. Using Google Docs, he created a table comparing what it's like to work at their company vs. Google. It's clever, targeted, and it made a point. Oh and it cost them nothing - except creativity! The result: there are already 19 blogs links into the page. That's how I heard about it. And now you did too. (Via Inside Google)

Comments

[Kevin Dugan]

Stunts are for Evel Knievel and lack strategy. I like the phrase Web 2.0 more than I like the phrase stunt. ;-)

[Russell Davies]

That's spot on, Steve. Look at what's going on here:
http://yiarkungfu.blogspot.com/

Is the media fragmentation going further than before? A band has whittled down it's online presence to one single song.

What's next? A blog just for a single sentence? Crazy!

[olivier Blanchard]

I am surprised that the publicity stunt is still considered to be a viable tactic. Most fail miserably. Unless the stunt has universal appeal and is cool, exciting, original, and compelling, it will at best turn out to be an expensive cry for help. (The term "attention whore" comes to mind.)

With the continuing rise of social media - including the proliferation of portable devices (currently approaching a peak in the texting phase of their evolution), I am surprised that our propensity for gossip and spreading rumors hasn't been used with more cunning by marketers. What can be more tantalizing that "getting the inside scoop" from a trusted friend or an industry insider about... a product launch, or a sneak peek at a new design. The context of the rumor, paired with the technology of choice (currently, teenagers texting all day long) could help a company bypass "the stunt" altogether in favor of a faster, more effective, and much more exciting way to allow the desired information to spread (like wildfire). There's an extremely short shelf-life to this type of tactic, but the first companies to use it well may enjoy the full extent of its power. Latecomers will, however see these types of tactics come back to bite them in the proverbial arses.

Great post, Steve.