This document discusses the marketing technique of prankvertising, which involves surprising or entrapping unsuspecting consumers with pranks or stunts to promote brands. Several examples are provided, such as The Weather Channel installing sprinklers in a bus shelter to promote its app, Ford promoting the Mustang with a "blind date" stunt, and WestJet surprising passengers with gifts matching their Christmas wishes. The document examines viral marketing campaigns for movies like "The Last Exorcism 2" and "Devil's Due" that used hidden camera scares, as well as stunts by Nivea and LG.
2. Prepared By
Manu Melwin Joy
Assistant Professor
SCMS School of Technology and Management
Kerala, India.
Phone – 9744551114
Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com
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3. Prankvertising
• Prankvertising is the fact
of entraping or surprising
unsuspecting consumers
by a prank, hidden
camera or spectacular
stunt.
4. • Weather Channel 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.
5. • Ford, 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.”
6. • Canadian airline WestJet’s 2013 Christmas Miracle. 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.
7. • 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.
8. • The scary prank for the 2013 movie “The Last
Exorcism 2” used a hidden camera to spook
customers in Beauty Shop Scare, which has about
4 million views to date.
9. • 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.
10. • The 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.
11. • The LG meteor prank named Ultra Reality. This is a
genuinely unnerving watch that, despite showing you the
complex set-up and stating the word ‘prank’ on the
channel, still effectively puts you in the place of the victim,
and makes you wonder exactly what you would do in the
same situation.
12. • Carrie’s viral marketing campaign, uploaded
to YouTube simply as Telekinetic Coffee Shop
Surprise by the mysterious user CarrieNYC,
just a week before the film’s US release date.
13. • The UK’s Department for Transport uploaded
under the fairly innocuous title #PubLooShocker,
this tricks the viewer, and indeed the patron, into
receiving a valuable and powerful lesson.
