Lush's Animal-testing-on-human PR Stunt

Today we will talk about this fairly recent campaign that shocked thousands of Londoners on their way to work or the odd shopping trip.

(Taken from here)

THE CAMPAIGN

Last April, Lush decided to reinforce their stance towards animal testing on the occasion of the World Week for Animals in Laboratories. The PR stunt that constituted the epicenter of the campaign was extremely original and powerful.


A performance artist, Jaquelin Traide, underwent the same horrific treatments to which animals are submitted, dressed in a nude body stocking. She was kept  for 10 hours in a shop window of the Regent Street Lush store, in London. Jaquelin was given injections, shaved, and got cosmetics dropped into her eyes, all standard procedures for animal testing.

(Taken from here)

The stunt caused horror and persuaded 200,000 people to sign a petition demanding EU-wide legislation against animal testing. Of course the media coverage was huge.


MY OPINION
The stunt was certainly powerful and conveyed strong images. I personally really liked it. The idea was very original and bold. I also think that this shock campaign was a very effective way to raise awareness of animal testing. Sometimes people do need a shock.

#McFail - Beware of the Hashtag

From a brilliant example of PR to... a flop. Today I want to talk about the famous McFail.

(taken from here)

WHAT HAPPENED?

A few months ago (January 2012) the McDonald's started a 'hashtag campaign' on Twitter with the aim of generating some publicity and quality User Generated Content (UGC). They launched #McDStories and #MeetTheFarmers as promoted tweets.

It all started off pretty well with the McDonald's official account telling stories about the production of the burgers and cheese process... But soon enough Twitter users hijacked the hashtag and started tweeting disgusting stories and comments about past experiences at McDonald's.

                                                                 (taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

Animal rights groups took the opportunity to share horrific images of McDonald's food.

The campaign lasted less than 2 hours. Rick Wion, social media director, had to call it off straight away.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

The social media team probably got stuck on the 'big idea', deciding to ignore the risks that it involved. The association between McDonald's and the word 'stories' was a dangerous one, and I refuse to believe that no one in the team raised their voice to question the campaign before the launch. With such a big name and a long history of complaints though, it was naive for the company to hope that it all would have worked out fine.

LESSON TO LEARN

UGC cannot be controlled on micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. There is no chance for the companies to moderate the content and tone of what people think and publish. If you are really eager to launch a campaign that involves UGC, try to do it in a more controlled environment such as Facebook. There you can set your own rules before launching the campaign and then have the right to delete deleterious comments. Also, we must remember that the best UGC is usually spontaneous. If we try to force the public to write/talk about us, it can end very badly.

Cheddarvision

I want to start this collection of reviews with one of my favourite PR campaigns: Cheddarvision, by Bray Leino.

Dom Lane, Creative Director at Bray Leino, delivered a lecture at Bournemouth University in which I was lucky enough to sit in this year. He told us all about the campaign, so I'm happy to share the details I know.

THE ISSUE:

In the end of 2006, West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers were facing economic issues and needed a sales boost. The budget was small, but the situation severe. They decided to hire a PR consultancy to try to solve the issue.

THE SOLUTION:

With such a small budget (in the region of 5/10k if I remember correctly), Bray Leino needed to generate a simple original idea that could be executed at a low cost. 

Dom told he was sitting in a meeting with a client that produced wine and he suddenly had the idea of filming the growth of grapes and the process of making wine. Unfortunately the meeting's purpose was that of dismissing the agency for budgeting reasons. Right after the meeting, West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers called him to check how things were evolving with their account. He realised that the idea he had for the ex client could be applied to their key product - cheese.

Bray Leino set up a webcam in West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers' farm to film the maturing of the Cheddar. A micro site was launched to stream the video online. It quickly got viral. By the end of march 2007, the website hit over half a million visits. 


The cheese round got so famous that it was 'baptised' Wedginald. During the broadcast, Wedginal went to Glastonbury festival, received a Valentine's Day card, wore a red nose, opened a Facebook and Twitter account, and became a good-luck charm at the Rugby World Cup.

You can see a time-lapse of the famous cheese maturing from month 0 to 12 here. 

When Wedginald finally matured, it was auctioned off for Children in Need and sent to its buyer all the way to Australia, first class.

The success of the campaign was huge; in fact Bray Leino won the CIPR Pride Awards 2007. 


MY OPINION:


I believe this is a clear example of a creative campaign that has the 'viral factor' and that 'has legs'; that's why it worked. I guess we all dream of conceiving something that has the potential to get viral. However, we must never forget that viral is an effect. We can only produce intended viral material, spread it as much as we can and hope it will become viral... Let the magic happen. If it is good enough, the magic will happen.