By Lisa Lacy.
Brands that want to release videos that are viewed millions of times could do worse than implementing a prank strategy. This marketing tactic – so-called “prankvertising” – is nothing new and has actually been part of recent strategies from major brands like Ford and Budweiser. But simply filming a prank isn’t enough to guarantee millions of viewers. Successful prankvertising requires striking a delicate balance between fakery and reality.
One major advantage to prankvertising is that it easily allows brands to cut through all of the noise in the media landscape.
“In school, if you were in a class with 20 other kids and wanted the teacher’s attention, you raised your hand and the teacher would help you,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. “But if you’re in a class with 5,000 kids, you have to stand up on the desk and drop your pants and say a naughty word and I think that’s what prankvertising is doing.”
However, like anything, there are good and bad examples of prankvertising, and they all generally fall under three major categories: funny and quirky; warm and fuzzy; and scary and/or mean.
Here is a look at each of these categories, as well as the risks and rewards associated with them.
Good Pranks
Prank Type 1: Funny & Quirky
The first category is what Thompson describes as “funny, quirky” campaigns like the 2013 effort from the Weather Channel that installed sprinklers in a bus shelter in order to rain on passengers at specific intervals to promote the brand’s Android app that “alerts users down to the exact minute of impending weather changes,” the video description says.
It also includes Ford, which, for Valentine’s Day 2015, promoted its Mustang model by “[asking] a bunch of unsuspecting guys to meet [“a beautiful professional stunt driver”] on a blind date they’ll never see coming.”
To date, the video, Ford Mustang Speed Dating, has 12 million views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nyr1Ao7iZA“It’s funny because it flipped over expectations,” Thompson said. “She deliberately [plays] one kind of character, which fulfills a stereotype and then she becomes an incredible driver.”
Another reason the Ford video was so effective is that the spot really features the product itself – the 2015 Mustang – in a way that not many other prank videos do, he adds.
Ford Mustang Speed Dating was not unlike the 2013 Pepsi Max stunt with race car driver Jeff Gordon, which has 44.1 million views to date. In it, a disguised Gordon “takes an unsuspecting car salesman on the test drive of his life.”
The follow-up Test Drive 2, in which Gordon pulls a prank “on an unsuspecting automotive journalist who had questioned the authenticity of the original ‘Test Drive,’” has 18.1 million views.
As these videos demonstrate, while “prank” may carry a negative connotation, branded pranks aren’t necessarily always bad.
And the same is true for the next category, which Thompson said is actually the most effective.
Prank Type 2: Warm & Fuzzy
These pranks are effective in part because there is no real opportunity for backlash. Thompson calls Canadian airline WestJet’s 2013 Christmas Miracle video, which has 40.9 million views to date, “the gold standard” for this type.
In it, the brand asked passengers what they wanted for Christmas before boarding a flight and then purchased these items, wrapped them while they were en route, and delivered them at the baggage claim at their destination.
The 2014 follow-up, Spirit of Giving, in which the airline brought “a snowy Canadian Christmas to a community in the Dominican Republic,” has 3.1 million views.
“The warm ones are not so much pranks, but it’s like Oprah was doing with her favorite things – ‘You get a car, you get a car, you get a car,’ and it does give you that warm feeling,” Thompson said. “There’s not a sense of ambush and no sense of being taken advantage of and all the rest.”
It’s still, however, incredibly manipulative. But it’s manipulation that results in a warm feeling, he notes.
Not-So-Good Pranks
Then there are the more schadenfreude‑y pranks that go in an entirely different direction.
Prank Type 3: Scary And/Or Mean
“There’s a fine line between really funny – we do like to see other people made fools of even though it doesn’t appeal to most noble part of the human spirit – and we can find it funny because it is not us, but there’s a fine line between that and starting to perceive something as just plain mean,” Thompson said.
But just because they are mean, doesn’t mean these video don’t generate tons of views.
Take the scary prank for the 2013 movie “The Last Exorcism 2”, for example. It used a hidden camera to spook customers in Beauty Shop Scare, which has about 4 million views to date.
The more recent Devil Baby Attack for the January 2014 movie “Devil’s Due” had a similar premise of scaring unsuspecting consumers on New York City streets with a crying baby in a stroller. It has 50.8 million views to date.
But brands that attempt pranks of this nature face some real obstacles.
First and foremost, if the pranks are genuine, marketers run the risk of creating content that is potentially offensive and/or dangerous and/or spurs lawsuits, Thompson said. He points to a 2013 effort from Nivea, the Airport Stress Test, which turned airport passengers into wanted criminals on the front pages of newspapers and in breaking news alerts to promote the idea of a deodorant for the stressed subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID0Ag6BEJsk“It seems odd in the 21st century to be doing any kind of pranks in airports,” Thompson said. “They’re kind of scary places since 2001.”
There is also the potential for broader backlash if consumers in general don’t react well to the prank’s premise and have negative feelings toward the brand thereafter.
Lesson 1: Don’t Go Too Far
“I don’t think products in the end want to be associated with a sense of meanness,” Thompson said. “Prankvertising is a delicate balance of fakery and reality. It’s going far enough to get millions of people to watch, but not so far that they begin to resent what you did.”
Mike Michalowicz, CEO of consulting firm Provendus Group, agrees.
Brands have to push limits to get recognition and the potential for videos to go viral, but if they go too far, they can start offending people, he said.
Lesson 2: Don’t Fake It
One of the biggest challenges in prankvertising is that consumers have become suspicious about how much is real.
“It’s like reality TV, [where] we don’t mind if they reshot a few scenes here and there and had a bit of manipulation, but a lot of people are getting the sense that they’re complete artifice from start to finish,” Thompson said. “That’s the biggest threat…is getting cynical about these things. If I told you ‘Candid Camera’ was faked, ‘Candid Camera’ would have been no fun to watch.”
If the pranks turn out to have incorporated actors simply pretending to be pranked, Thompson said the campaigns become potentially irrelevant.
He points to an example from electronics company Bosch, which reportedly broke into homes at night while homeowners were sleeping upstairs in order to vacuum downstairs to demonstrate how quiet Bosch vacuums are.
“The next morning, they showed [the homeowners] the videos and maybe it was true, but it certainly seems it has to [have been] staged,” Thompson said. “How could people so blithely respond that someone invaded their personal space?”
Prankvertising may be at a crossroads in which consumers have a sense of suspicion that video pranks are not real.
“I’m not sure how much fun it will be if they think we’re not getting actual real responses,” Thompson said.
But Thompson said he thinks brands will continue to use pranks and they will continue to evolve.
Modern Adaptations Of Old Advertising Tactics
The blind taste test is sort of like a prankvertising offshoot, according to Thompson.
Beer brand Budweiser recently went this route in its Budweiser Blind Taste Test video, which has 107,000 views since it was posted March 18.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1JQfuS1KgEAccording to Budweiser, the video was filmed in February at a bar in the very hip neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn, New York. In the video, bar patrons – which, per the brand, included real people, as well as actors in the background “to fill the large space” – were served an unknown beer, which they sampled were then surprised and delighted to discover was Budweiser.
“Brooklyn was selected for the video because we wanted to show that in any landscape – no matter what preconceived notions are attached to a place – Budweiser reigns supreme as the No. 1 full-flavored lager in America,” writes Brian Perkins, vice president of marketing at Budweiser, in an email. “We think everyone can relate to the old adage to not judge a book by its cover. This video brings that idea to life and we hope will encourage young adult drinkers to reconsider what they think they know about Budweiser. We want to highlight Budweiser taste attributes in a new, fun way.”
For his part, Thompson likens this effort to the Pepsi Challenge during the cola wars.
“It might be an effective one because it’s an old tried and true idea – you do a blind taste test and see that you like the product,” Thompson said. “But the one thing about Bud that’s interesting is that, as I recall, the premise is: ‘Isn’t this amazing that the beer you like so much is Budweiser?’”
In other words, even though the message is that despite all of the fancy beers from craft brewers, in the end, what consumers like is a good old-fashioned Budweiser, Thompson said the underlying message is nevertheless, “Isn’t it amazing that you like a Bud?”
“Whenever you defend against a stereotype, you acknowledge that there’s a stereotype to be defended against,” Thompson said. “‘Isn’t it amazing I actually liked Bud?’ Yeah, it’s amazing, which confirms that there’s something we don’t expect to like.”
What’s your take on prankvertising?
