Context Collapse: Publicity Stunts As Bang-For-Buck Multiplier
Hacking Attention Spans With Goblin Creativity: CC #230
In this issue: Skittles PR, short attention spans and how you can turn weird s@#t into coverage for your clients.
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
Let’s kick off today’s newsletter with a personal story: Not too long ago, as an adult in my forties, I found out that I had ADHD. I know, I know—someone in marketing and advertising with attention span issues? Hold the presses!1 But bear with me…
One of the things with ADHD is that it’s very, very hard for something to get your attention unless it’s something you focus on obsessively. More times than not, looking at something obsessively requires novelty.
And that focusing on something obsessively—something unique to you that you have to pay attention to—brings us to the subject of today’s newsletter: Publicity stunts.
After the jump: The power of mustard-flavored Skittles.
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So, here’s the backstory. Not too long ago, French’s Mustard (which is owned by much larger food company McCormick) announced a partnership with Skittles (which is owned by much larger food company Mars) to launch mustard-flavored Skittles.
These candies, which frankly sound awful, can only be obtained by attending special branded events:
"From Mustard Ice Cream to last year's viral Mustard Donuts, this year marks the fifth time French's has gone all out with unique, flavorful innovations to celebrate National Mustard Day. With the yellow holiday landing on August 5th, we knew we had to outdo ourselves," said Valda Coryat, North America Vice President of Marketing for McCormick & Company. "We are thrilled to collaborate with SKITTLES to deliver our beloved Classic Yellow® Mustard tang in a new, fun way to French's and SKITTLES fans alike."
Consumers will also have a chance to taste French's Mustard SKITTLES and snag some branded swag when French's hits the road on a multi-stop tour up the East Coast in the 'Mustard Mobile', a bright yellow custom-designed vintage bus complete with giant Mustard SKITTLES on top. French's will be posting a map so people can stop by or follow along on the journey.
Got it! Here, we have three of the most important ingredients for a successful publicity stunt:
Novelty. (mustard-flavored candy)
Easy to understand but hard to access. (must attend a specific event at a specific location in a specific city)
Visually distinct. (all important for our current TikTok/IG era)
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However, publicity stunts are much more important now—and I will fight this point with anyone—because of the changing model of mass media in the 2020s. In our age and time, user generated content (UGC, social media, whatever you want to call it) is king, queen, and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.2
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To put it more bluntly: One random person posting to TikTok or Instagram or Twitter/X/Elon Musk’s House of Puzzling Business Decisions OmniConcern Inc. can have reach similar or exceeding that of the New York Times. This is a feature, not a bug!
We can see an example of the publicity stunt in advertising factor with Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast, a fantastically successful YouTube creator who can go toe-to-toe with the most expensive HBO production, creates videos which mix philanthropic aspects with sheer publicity stunt zaniness. But, in this case, the publicity stunts are to promote Mr. Beast himself and for you, in turn, to watch more Mr. Beast videos.
The publicity stunt is crucial to Mr. Beast's success. The publicity stunt captures our attention-challenged eye and gets us to pay attention. Here are some other examples of publicity stunts from recent months:
All of these turned novelty into endless social media content and earned media3 through a magic alchemy:
Do some weird shit that people will pay attention to and make sure it’s weird enough that it will grab the attention of someone who would ignore it otherwise.
Make sure said weird shit appeals to a passionate audience (mustard fans and Dunkin Donuts fans are two of those!) that has better-than-average odds of talking about them.
Transmute the weird shit through the power of attention into free coverage for your advertising clients through organic social media or television segments or articles in magazines or fan content on TikTok or YouTube or…
It doesn’t always succeed. But damn it, publicity stunts really do punch above their weight class.
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Neurodiverse people love the advertising industry, and the advertising industry loves them in turn. An advertising agency without any employees or contractors who have ADD, ADHD, ASD or dyslexia is pretty much fucked creatively and culturally.
Advertising agencies and marketing firms understand the power of UGC, as do wide demographic segments of the larger public. But because social media posting is more decentralized and harder to influence, it creates challenges for agencies used to top-down hierarchical relationships.
Earned media, for those who are lucky enough not to work in PR or marketing = Media coverage through “traditional” outlets like television news, newspapers or (now they’re traditional LOL) websites that are earned through the outlet being interested in their work. The opposite of earned media is paid media, aka advertising.