Prankvertising: marketing gold or a shock too far?

In a bid to think up exciting and creative videos that may just – touch wood – go viral, a growing trend has emerged in the advertising industry that involves simply pulling pranks on the general public for the amusement of future viewers.

The instant popularity of LG’s meteor attack video and the recent PR stunt pulled to promote the Hollywood remake of horror classic ‘Carrie’ may tempt marketers to utilise video in a similar way, but is that really a wise idea?

At the Youth 100, a recent marketing event that looked at the favourite brands among 18-24 year-old Brits, Voxburner’s Luke Mitchell argued that shock tactics carried out by brands are old-hat: “You can’t shock the New Generation…[it is] pragmatic and de-sensitised,” Mitchell said, the use of shock to promote a campaign being instead understood as a “lame tactic”.

When discussing this, Mitchell used the example of Miley Cyrus, whose own personal brand has, well, slipped somewhat from her Hannah Montana days. He said younger UK audiences would be less “Oh my God” about Miley’s twerking habits, and react with more of a “what are you doing?” instead. However, as .rising reported only recently, Miley Cyrus’ branding has done pretty damn well of late, with Tubefilter revealing just last week that the 20 year-old’s YouTube channel has become the most watched in the whole world.

So, maybe Mitchell is right, the raw reactions of viewers aren’t the same when advertising and marketing teams attempt to shock with campaigns, but that doesn’t stop people clicking, sharing and commenting on the controversial events anyway, especially when the if the stunt is a light-hearted prank pulled on an unsuspecting public.

Such pranks seem to have been going quite well for a couple of other brands currently, with LG Electronics‘ latest advertising campaign, which sees job applicants get the fright of their lives after the company uses its latest 84-inch TV to convince them of their impending doom by depicting oncoming meteors, receive almost 15 million YouTube hits.

Not to be outdone was Sony’s marketing team, who devised a potentially even more shocking – and amusing, in hindsight – prank to promote Stephen King’s horror flick ‘Carrie’, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. Uploaded by a certain ‘CarrieNYC’, the video explains how a team put together an extensive and organised prank to fool NYC residents at a vegetarian cafe into believing that one of their fellow customers had telekinetic powers.

A vegetarian eatery was potentially not the most tasteful of settings for the trick to take place, seeing as one of the most famous scenes in Carrie is when a vat of bright red pigs blood is poured all over the teenager, but the nonetheless the video has garnered almost 37 million YouTube hits thus far.

The only problems marketers may come across when considering a similar campaign could be… what if something horrific actually went wrong? As the description in the ‘Carrie’ video asks: “What if telekinesis was real? How would you react?” but a more fitting and realistic question could be: “What if someone actually tried to beat the hell out of the actress playing the telekinetic girl?” That probably wouldn’t go down so well with the YouTube community, or anyone, in fact.

The Guardian calls it ‘sadism‘, and believes the ‘prankvertising’ will eventually backfire, but right now, the YouTube hits do temptingly speak for themselves.

Our only warning to those thinking about staging their own pranks is this: it could all end in tears. Remember that, whatever you do, don’t put your actors or the public in danger; your brand’s reputation could end up filthier than Carrie, post-pig blood.