Twitter allows brands to show their personality and to create an identity online, when this is achieved it can create perfect PR stunts. All it takes is creativity, simplicity and intuitive for a brand to form a PR stunt which gets everyone talking and even better…it’s free!
Here are two brands that have caught my eye this month:
Chancellor George Osborne announced in his budget statement there would be a new shaped pound coin as it is believed that 3% of existing £1 coins are fake.
Jaffa Cakes were fast acting and responded to the tweet from the Royal Mint, George Osmond and the HM Treasury by recreating the new £1 coin in the form of a 12 sided Jaffa Cake and an amusing hashtag #ReduceJaffaCounterfeiting
This is a perfect PR stunt, with the tweet being applauded by hundreds and the #ReduceJaffaCounterfeiting has be mentioned many times. In less than 24 hours it had been featured in The Drum and PR Examples.
This is not the first time Jaffa Cakes have used their intuitive and been involved in PR stunts. They got involved in the Tesco Mobile brand banter conversation with Yorkshire Tea and Cadbury; this also gained Jaffa Cakes positive and free publicity.
Another one of my favourite PR stunt on Twitter this month is when Argos Helpers responded to a customer query:
This response created over 9000 retweets and The Daily Mail and The Metro both featured articles about the humorous response an Argos Helpers gave.
Argos Helpers have remained being witty and amusing when responding to customers when the time is right; however none have been as popular as Argos’ “Safe badman…” response.
Unlike Jaffa Cakes PR stunt it is unlikely that Argos expected the response to be as popular as it was. However responding the way they did shows they wanted to get noticed and therefore I would still class it as a very successful PR stunt.
Both these stunts show how brands can use Twitter to gain publicity, get people talking about their brand and to gain more followers. I would put the success of these two very different PR stunts down to the creativity and quick thinking on behalf of the PR team.
This post was written by Hannah Palmer, a 2nd year PR student who is currently interning at Prohibition PR where she is the Editor of Student Wire. Her previous experience includes Opportunity Peterborough, Wolfstar Consultancy and Peterborough United Football Club.
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