Annoying Opera singers? Sexy dino professors? Virtual Godzilla sized rappers? Edible Hotels?

What is a PR stunt? Standing for Public Relations and stunt being defined by Wikipedia as an unusual and difficult physical feat or an act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes. Companies use this technique to create traction around their brand or a campaign they are currently doing. Some are very successful and have launched very small businesses into being a home hold name. For example, since the launch of Gio Compario in a 2009 advertising campaign for GoCompare (car insurance), the brand and its ambassador Gio himself has become nationally known. The character is quite irate and has been hated for a long time, with advertisements showing his death, billboards being defaced. An unexpected and slightly unusual way of campaigning successfully is creating a character you hate and a jingle that you just can’t get out of your head. The company had a recorded £142.1 million revenue in 2016.

An example of an interesting but successful PR stunt is NOW (formerly known as NowTV) in 2018 with a massive sculpture of Jeff Goldblum for the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park. Instead of using a dinosaur and creating a pretty standard and expected PR stunt, they picked one of the franchise's characters. The statue is halfway between sexy and halfway between terrifying adding all the more comedy and surprise to the feature. Located in front of Tower Bridge in London, Potters Field and the massive man weighed 331 pounds, was over 9.8 feet high, and nearly 23 feet long. NOW, owned by Sky, is one of the top 10 streaming platforms in the UK.

COVID made many different work avenues to adapt and change to the current climate. One of those being entertainment. Many celebrities had to cancel music concerts and tours. However, a new era of digital entertainment emerged. Fortnite, the gaming platform created by Epic Games, and introduced in 2017, is very popular with 350 million registered users. In April 2020, they partnered with successful rapper Travis Scott, streaming his concert. It offered an experience only possible in the virtual realm, with Godzilla-looking Travis performing, with large graphics, colors, and effects. The watcher was also able to float around and become fully immersed in the show. 12 million people watched the show with the equivalent of 105 sold-out nights at the world’s biggest stadium, Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India. This gave both the singer and the gaming platform a huge amount of publicity.

Tate and Lyle’s is a British global supplier of food and beverages to markets. Originally a sugar refining business but divested in 2010. In 2013 to celebrate their relaunch and introduction of their ‘Taste Experience’ line of golden and brown cane sugars. They did the first-ever edible hotel in a London, Soho hotel. Guests were encouraged to eat their way through the hotel. It was for one night only and boasted vanilla sponge cushions, meringue rugs, a bathtub of popcorn, a sea turtle cake, a rainbow cake, 2,000 macaroon clad walls, a rug of 1,081 meringues, 20kg of marshmallow garlands. A team of 14 cake makers took more than 2,000 hours to bake and 900 hours to decorate the whole hotel. The event visitors won their entry in a competition. The unique and immersive experience gained the company news outlet recognition for its outrageous and out-of-this-world concept.