PR Disasters: Lessons to Learn from PR Stunts Gone Wrong

There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? Wrong.A PR stunt gone wrong can have a huge impact on your brand. As the examples in this article will show you, some PR stunts are so poorly planned or offensive that audiences will actively turn away from your company and what you are offering.Whether it’s due to a misjudgement of a target audience, a failure to align your PR stunt with your brand values or just a complete lack of sensitivity, a lot of things can go wrong. With PR stunts, there’s a thin line between a campaign that achieves (positive) viral fame, bringing attention and engagement to your brand and colossal failure. We’ve got a list of really quite terrible PR stunts to walk you through, so you can learn what *not* to do with your own campaigns.

The Belfast Story

A film about the Troubles in Northern Ireland is already touching upon a delicate subject. Sending out a promotional kit to the press filled with a balaclava, gaffer tape, and a bag of nails is really not a great way to manage the promotion of a film that handles an emotionally charged era of recent history. From the viewpoint of The Belfast Story’s production team, who mailed it out, the press releases were supposed to be making a point about Northern Ireland’s divided psyche after the Good Friday Agreement. To the public and the journalists who received it, it was considered distasteful, with many vowing not to go and see the film. Empire journalist Chris Hewitt was vocal about what he called a ‘moronic’ PR stunt, stating, ‘There is such a thing as bad publicity’. The fallout was quite substantial, with the film’s publicity company ‘Way to Blue’ dropping the film, as they hadn’t had a role in sending out the promotional package. The crisis management was weak; the director said, ‘Obviously, the intention is not to offend anyone. We apologise if we did’. Bad press coverage before a movie’s release, with many deciding on principle that they wouldn’t see the film, as well as an inadequate response from the crisis management team sure is a PR disaster worthy of this list. The Belfast Story’s production team didn’t assess the potential PR risks of mailing controversial content and unintentionally caused their film to flop before it even had a chance. So what can be learned? Think deeply before making a move. Step back and comprehensively assess the possible emotional impact on your target audience before pulling a stunt like this one. How do you recover from a PR disaster? Carefully devise a crisis communications plan that takes into account different affected parties’ emotions and responds to them appropriately and sensitively to maintain brand loyalty.

Call of Duty

Next on the list, still in the category of moronic, is Call of Duty’s live tweeting of a fake Singapore terror attack. This PR stunt was terribly misconceived. It wasn’t obvious that it was false during hours of tweeting the likes of, ‘Unconfirmed reports are coming in of an explosion on the North Bank of the Singapore Marina’. Under the Twitter name of ‘Current Events Aggregator’ they continued to churn out realistic updates, such as, ‘City Authorities urge the public not to panic, and not to hinder the emergency teams that are converging on the area.’ This PR stunt is particularly insidious and it was relentless in providing realistic ‘updates’ on the situation unfolding, with one tweet specifically stating that the story wasn’t fake. Several hours after the series of tweets finished, it was finally confirmed as fictional and was just a means to promote the upcoming release of the latest Black Ops game. They concluded with the message, ‘This was a glimpse into the future fiction of #BlackOps3.’After public outcry, the game designers released the almost sarcastic statement that they were shocked at the reaction to the stunt and apologised to anyone who was offended and fooled by the fake alerts. If there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that PR disaster management should not blame the audience for being too stupid to see that the stunt was a joke.Many Twitter users expressed that there had been too many similar tragedies to make this joke and criticised the stunt as irresponsible and distasteful. This example is obvious in what we can take from it: consider your audience’s feelings. PR should help build meaningful relationships with your target audience, if there’s a lack of empathy, such as in this campaign, you will lose their trust and lose their business. To manage a PR crisis, be compassionate and thoughtful to maintain a connection to your audience even in the face of a disaster. You have to act swiftly, addressing issues through various communication channels and ensuring transparent and consistent messaging across platforms to regain trust and control the narrative.

Ogilvy India’s Malala advert

Continuing with the theme of distastefulness, we have to mention Ogilvy India’s Malala advert for mattress company Kurl-On. Unsure of what possible link there could be between a girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for standing up for education rights and… mattresses? Well, there isn’t one. The company used the tagline ‘Bounce back’ under cartoon drawings of Malala being shot, falling onto a mattress and bouncing up to receive an award.Industry experts weren’t shy with their criticism. Tom Megginson, a Canadian advertising executive, wrote, ‘14-year-olds getting shot in the face by terrorists are appropriate content for mattress ads now? I am ashamed to be in the same industry as these ad people.’ A former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan called the advert ‘revolting’. Ogilvy handled this PR crisis by blaming the Indian office, which holds ‘contrary beliefs and different professional standards to those of Ogilvy and Mather, a UK-based company. They also apologised for the incident to Malala and her family. This campaign was a PR disaster as the Ogilvy team failed to include people and topics that aligned with their brand’s product and values and trivialised Malala’s trauma in order to sell a product.

Build-A-Bear

In the case of Build-A-Bear’s ‘Pay your Age’ stunt, they failed to take into account just how much people love a good deal. The promotion was simple; for one day only, whatever your child’s age is, is how much you would pay for one of their bears. The excessive anticipation generated on social media before the event, coupled with a lack of proper planning, led to the shops being quickly overwhelmed. Across their 400 stores, customers had to wait in line for several hours, and many had to close early due to safety concerns, as people fought tooth and nail for a discounted bear. One Twitter user described it: ‘like the Hunger Games…but fluffier’.A sour reaction spread after the event. Parents were enraged at having been turned away. The PR stunt had actually been fairly well designed: it made people feel a need to act quickly, promoted an in-store experience, and was unique. So what went wrong? As the day got going, the company issued a press-release saying they couldn’t have predicted this reaction. Why not? Why didn’t they have a contingency plan if the campaign were to draw in huge crowds? After closing the event early, the PR crisis team handed out $15 vouchers for those who had waited in excessive lines. But this wasn’t enough to appease everyone, as the ‘Pay Your Age’ promotion would have given them a far larger discount.So, if you’re planning a massive promotional deal to bring in an army of customers to your shop, make sure you're prepared. When building a PR stunt strategy, incorporating thorough media monitoring is essential to gauge public reactions, identify potential risks, and adapt strategies in real time for a more successful and well-informed execution.

Kendall Jenner's Pepsi Ad

By trying to forcefully fit your brand into the right narratives by publicly associating with values like inclusivity and diversity whilst marketing yourselves as appealing to everyone, there's a risk of ending up as 'unappealing to any specific demographic.'This is precisely the case with the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. It shows a scene in which Jenner approaches a policeman in the midst of a protest and gives him a can of Pepsi. This then ends the rising conflict between the two groups, which mirrored imagery from Black Lives Matter protests. Very quickly, it received a lot of backlash and was pulled from screens. It was widely regarded as unrealistic, insensitive and trivialised the reality of tension and fear involved in protesting police brutality. The executive director of the Marsha P. Johnson Insititute put simply, ‘No one is finding joy from Pepsi at a protest…That’s just not reality…that’s not what it looks like to take bold action’. What this failed PR stunt shows is how forcing diversity will never be received as genuine. Pepsi misguidely claiming that their brand could bring about peace and unification, undermined the complex, often violent experiences of those fighting for justice. Another important lesson to take away from this is to test the market before heavily investing in a campaign. Seriously. See what people think before throwing money at such an ill-conceived idea that will have long-lasting implications for your brand.

Ghost in the Shell

Finally, we come to the world of meme-making. Now, as we saw with Barbie’s marketing, meme makers can help build excitement and spread amusement. However, the meme generator for the manga adaptation of Ghost in the Shell didn’t share the same success on social media channels.Originally a Japanese comic, Ghost in the Shell made the questionable decision of casting white actress Scarlett Johansson as the protagonist. In a promotional video, fans are encouraged to visit IAmMajor.me, where they could submit an image of themselves as a response to the question 'Who are you?' Anticipating reactions which aligned with the film's theme of inner strength, the audience surprised the marketing team by using the meme maker to highlight the issue of whitewashing in the film.One Twitter user tweeted a picture of an Asian actress with the tagline, ‘I am the woman that should have been cast’, whilst other ones stated, ‘I am not Japanese’ and ‘I am in love with white feminism’. This PR stunt backfired for several reasons, one being the unpredictability of the internet. Although social media users can be powerful messengers, they don’t always disseminate the intended message. The film’s marketing team failed to recognise the widespread opinion of their problematic casting before putting the power in the hands of internet users, which led to a lot of negative publicity for the film’s release. These consequences were obviously unintended, but more research into public thought is needed before forcefully encouraging viral public opinion through a meme generator.These insensitive, offensive and poorly planned stunts show us the importance of extensive forethought. Most of the PR crises could have been avoided had the marketing teams thought a little less about how to shock and a little more about the emotional consequences of the stunt on their target audience. I think it’s safe to say not all publicity is good.

Setting up for PR success with Don’t Panic

Whilst these publicity stunts might not have gone to plan, it isn’t all doom and gloom - with proper planning, you can produce PR stunts that hit the mark and smash your vision. Check out some of our most successful PR campaigns on our PR case studies page! Want to avoid PR disasters? Click here to chat with the Don’t Panic team today!