Move over flash mobs, there’s a new and equally pointless trend taking over in the world of PR stunts.
The celebrity head.
That’s right, a perfect fit to answer any PR brief… guaranteed media coverage as long as you have a product that can (somewhat) successfully be crafted to look like the head of a celebrity.
Preferably a celebrity who happens to host a TV show.
There was the huge news last month about the Karl Stefanovic chocolate head, which received mention on the Today show as well as spilling over into print and online media, including News.com, Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and this very website. Dave Hughes and Matt Preston heads were also part of the stunt by chocolate store Darrel Lea.
Today was another impressive work of edible portraiture in the form of celebrity egg heads. That’s eggs, painted with the faces of… wait for it… Australian TV personalities.
The (kind of) famous faces included hosts of Channel Ten’s ‘The Circle’ Chrissie Swan and Gorgi Coghlan, who in-turn gave the ovum art a decent run on the show this morning. There was about a minute of close-ups and giggles at all the oh-so-cute little eggs, along with a brief a mention that today is World Egg Day.
In (archaic) PR measurement terms, both these stunts would be considered hugely successfully. Added up, the volume of coverage, the cumulative circulation reach and the client-loved ‘Advertising Value Equivalent’* would look pretty good.
But do we even know what the communication objectives were for either of those stunts? Aside from a quick brand mention for Darrel Lea and World Egg Day… what exactly was the point? The Darrel Lea chocolate heads stunt was to raise money for the Save the Bilby Fund, with the heads eventually auctioned off on eBay. This message had at least some cut-through with most media, though I doubt most who remember the chocolate Karl paid enough attention to remember the bilbies.
The stunt around World Egg Day is most likely a push by the Australia Egg Corporation to promote the health benefits of eggs and encourage people to include more eggs in their diet, with the end result being selling more eggs.Aside from a potential short spike in egg sales for pre-school arts and crafts, the egg head coverage will not go far in educating the public on eggs or increasingly consumption. Fortunately, unlike the sweet stylings of chocolate Karl, this would have at least been pretty cheap to execute.
But what does the future hold for the celebrity head PR stunt? How far can it go? The fruit and veg industry in particular could do a lot with this. Potato Kochie, Pumpkin Lisa, Mango Larry…. Will Tip Top soon be sending Kerri-Anne her likeness carved out of burnt toast?
Years after T-Mobile impressed us with some of the first flash mobs, the last sad embers of the craze inexplicably continue to burn for many brands. Let’s just hope the celebrity head PR stunt doesn’t inflict the same slow death upon gullible clients and poor Karl Stefanovic.
*Advertising Value Equivalent’ or AVE: A measure of PR success that takes the total print, radio, TV, online coverage achieved and works out how much it would have cost to buy the equivalent space/time in advertising.
Samantha Webb is a reformed PR from Sydney who has turned away from the dark side, but still keeps a keen eye in on its machinations and manipulations. She tweets here.
