What makes a good PR campaign?

So what makes a good PR campaign? For me a good PR campaign is visual, has clear objectives and affects many stakeholders. Over the past few years’ three campaigns have caught my eye and I would say that they are the three most successful campaigns of all time.

You may have seen this campaign DUMB WAYS TO DIE. It was created by advertising agency McCann back in 2013 for Metro trains based in Australia. The aim of the campaign was to raise public awareness of train safety in a visual way that everyone will listen to. Through this video we see featured animated characters being electrocuted, murdered and run over by trains. The campaign is all about “how setting your hair on fire” or “poking a stick at a grizzly bear” is not as dumb as “standing too close to the edge of train station platform”.

The campaign won most successful ad campaign in history at the Cannes ad festival, along with 5 Grand Prix awards. The video has been viewed more than 97 million times on YouTube, which is proof; you don’t need a lot of money to produce a successful outstanding campaign.

Not only was a viral video created for this PR campaign they also created a game. The game stars the 21 characters shown throughout the video. The aim of the game is to avoid the dangerous activities and gain points. This is especially effective because players are encouraged to do the right thing around trains. For example in one of the games the player has to drag the character forward before they fall on the tracks.

The second campaign that really grabbed my attention was the Red Bull Stratos space jump. In 2012, Felix Baumgartner ascended a 128,100 ft journey to space in a stratospheric balloon where he done a free fall back down to earth. The purpose of this campaign was to increase product purchase of Red Bull. Also to break the 1960 102,800 ft. record achieved by Joseph Kittinger. Both of these aims were achieved. Sales rose 7% to $1.6 billion and increased to 13% over the year. 5.2 billion cans were sold worldwide, plus 5 records were broken (highest freefall and highest manned balloon flight were 2 of them). The public could watch the jump live from Red Bull’s web page. This campaign was highly effective because it was a worldwide story that got everyone excited. Breaking a world record just proves how successful the campaign really was.

Finally not to forget the campaign that was so successful they brought it back the following Summer. The Share a Coke campaign, first launched in the summer of 2013 with the aim to take a global brand and make it personal for its consumers. Coca- Cola chose the most popular boys and girls names and printed them onto all sized Coke bottles and cans. As the campaign became increasingly popular Coca- Cola decided to use other names such as family names: mum, dad and brother.

The campaign was huge across social media. Twitter received 998 million impressions with 111,000 users hash tagging #shareacoke. With 17,000 virtual named bottles being shared online across Europe.

Not only were the general public getting drawn to this project but celebrities such as One Direction, Emma Roberts, Nick Grimshaw and many more did too. What I love about this campaign is everyone got involved. It doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity or the general public the campaign that targeted the entire population.

The simplest campaigns are the ones that go down in history.