University of Southern Denmark, Odense

MSc in Economics and Business Administration

Brand Management and Marketing Communication

Desislava Dobreva

“Prankvertising” – behind the curtains of consumers’ consciousness. An

advertising stunt gone bad or a marketing panacea?

Introduction

A research conducted by Media Dynamics, Inc in 2007 states that we, as consumers, are

exposed to around 600-625 advertisements per day (Media Matters, 2007). This statistic is

overwhelming enough to make us think about what the companies are willing to do to make sure

their products are seen and/or heard.

2012 and 2013 laid down the foundations of a new trend in advertising called

“prankvertising”, which can be viewed as a type of stealth marketing. With many adjectives

associated to it, such as “outrageous”, (Gianatasio, 2013, April), “sadistic” (Nudd, 2013, Sept.) , and

the fact that the press has went as far as to even refer to it as “a marketing heart-attacktic too far”

(Mahdawi, 2013, Oct.), the discussion of this marketing tactic is, to say the least, controversial.

The scenario of it generally consists of playing a trick on an unsuspecting consumer in an

attempt to evoke fear before showing him the product and afterwards releasing the video for the

public to see with the main goal of creating a marketing impact.

This study focuses on consumers’ reactions towards a “prankvertising” video that is part

of a campaign against drinking and driving. More specifically, the research focus is set on

whether this advertisement encourages the spreadability of the message it conveys or if it is

perceived as too extreme and consumers do not see it as successful, so they are not motivated to

share it.

Therefore, I argue that even though this new way of promoting a product is definitely

unorthodox, in this case it makes a lasting impression on viewers and participants, and, as seen in

the comments, it does make them think about the message the creators are trying to get through

and also – share it.

I offer as evidence the analysis I did on 120 Youtube comments under the advertising

video.

The paper is structured as follows: Firstly, I present the literature I am going to use in

order to connect this study with previous ones that might help us understand this new case better.

Secondly, I explain the methodology used to collect and analyze the data in this paper, and,

finally – after presenting the findings of the analysis, I conclude with a discussion and important

takeaways.

Theory

A current Yankelovich survey (Wegert 2004) found that 65 percent of consumers feel

bombarded with too many advertising messages, and 60 percent have a more negative opinion of

advertising than a few years ago. The same study found that almost 60 percent of consumers felt

that advertising had nothing relevant to offer them. (Retrieved from: Porter & Golan (2006). In

addition to that, as Spreadable Media suggests, “television, Clm, and recording industry

executives all work in a universe in which they know full well that more than 80percent of what

they develop and create will fail commercially” (Jenkins, 2013). These facts lead us to presume

that companies are starting to use more advanced, but also more extreme methods to keep the

interest in their products alive. Since one of the first prankvertising videos to go viral with over

50 million views on Youtube, a video showing a seemingly telekinetic event at a coffee shop,

more and more people are adopting this new way of advertising into their own campaigns. And

since “Any creator — whether media company, fan, academic, or activist — produces material

in the hope of attracting audience interest” (Jenkins, 2013), it can be said that interest is the main

factor that influences the success or failure of a product. Prankvertising does not completely fall

under a specific theory or literature, since to my knowledge it has not yet been studied in depth.

By referring to Spreadable Media, the literature on the attention economy, viral marketing

literature and other studies relevant to this case, this paper attempts to help readers understand

better consumer’s reactions to this specific commercial by exploring if it manages to get through

to them by engaging them in sharing and discussing. To do that, first we have to acknowledge

that “the structure of the advertising industry has changed” (Russell, 2009) and with change

comes opportunity. In this case – the opportunity to do something new, strange and even

frightening to the public, with the goal of creating an enormous marketing impact.

Method

Reception analysis and discourse analysis

Since the focus of this study is to explore and understand the reactions of consumers under a

Youtube video, I chose a qualitative research method - discourse analysis as the method for

analyzing data in this paper. As it is sometimes defined as the “analysis of language beyond the

sentence” (Tannen, D, LSA), this method will help me discover what the meaning of certain

comments of consumers is, the arguments they get into and how they react to the advertisement

based on these comments.

To gather my data I am going to use reception analysis, focusing only on the comments and not

on the consumers that are writing them, since this study researches mostly spreadability and

reactions, without going into depth in social backgrounds, age or sex of consumers. The aim is to

extract the meaning of the comments, which is not always an easy task, because “meaning, in

media as well as in face-to-face interaction is generated according to the communicative

repertoires, or codes, of the encoder(s) and interpreted according to the communicative

repertoires of the decoder(s)” (Schroder, 2004).

Case context

Over the last year prankvertising has become increasingly viral and has provoked a large variety

of opinions on its essence – from commentators thinking of it only as staged commercials with

really bad acting and none effect whatsoever, to others going as far as to call it risky and

dangerous to peoples’ lives. The Youtube advertisement this paper focuses on is called

#Publooshocker. It promotes a campaign against drunk driving, created for London's Department

of Transportation as part of their anti-drive drunk campaign, THINK! The creator is Leo Burnett

London advertising agency and is part of a series of advertisements including print and radio

ones.

The video shows different men standing in front of a bathroom mirror when suddenly it smashes

and a female mannequin head covered in blood appears, recreating the effect of smashing

through a car windshield. The aim of the advertisement is to recreate what happens in an actual

car accident. To shock potential drinkers noise is also included so that they can understanding the

real dangers of drinking and driving.

To this moment the video has 10,009,932 views, 20, 106 likes and 2008 dislikes. My research

aims to analyze the discourse that occurs in the Youtube comments under this advertisement.

More specifically, the goal here is to discover if that commercial manages to grab people’s

attention and engage them in sharing and talking about the message it conveys – that you should

not drive after you have been drinking. This case is somewhat different from other

advertisements of this type. Usually it is a normal product such as a television and the creators

aim for shocking the participants and the viewers to an extent that when the scene finishes, it

takes a few seconds to understand what has just happened. It is not known whether they use

actors or people who do not know what is about to happen, hence there are many debates over

the ethical side of this new marketing tactic. However, this advertisement is created for a good

cause, not to sell a product, therefore it should be considered as an extension of this

“prankvertising” trend – a different angle to the marketing strategy that shocked the whole world

when it appeared for the first time.

Analysis

The specific sample frame here include 120 comments under the fore-mentioned Youtube

commercial. Various comments with a relevance to the advertisement were analyzed, providing

data which strengthens our knowledge of the attitudes and opinions of these Youtube

commentators towards the video and the way they participate in the cause by sharing the ad,

mostly using hashtags.

Research Limitations

The comments only let us examine a part of the sharing process, since it cannot reveal how many

users have shared the video via other social media such as Facebook or twitter.

This paper presents the first results of a research that needs to be deepened and widened in order

to gain a broader perspective on the case studied and the whole prankvertising phenomenon as

well, and therefore understand how users perceive this new trend.

In further research it could be possible to use other methods to understand the situation better, as,

for instance, taking part in the process of commenting and asking the participants direct

questions about #Publooshocker. In this way it may be easier to understand if they have shared it

via other social media and if they find the advertisement just shocking enough to portray what

could happen if you drive drunk.

Discussion

According to Belk (2007) sharing is “the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for

their use and/or the act and process of receiving or taking something from others for our use.”

What we can take away from this is that sharing is a non-reciprocal act, since consumers do not

expect anything in return – they do it when they find what they are sharing relevant with the

person. Sharing can also be done for establishing a social status or a point of view, showing to

the public what you deem interesting and what not. This study suggests that even though the

literature related to consumers’ sharing and opinions of new marketing trends provides a certain

theoretical framework, it does not provide a full understanding of this new phenomenon called

“prankvertising”. It is something that needs to be further examined in order for us to find out

how it fits in consumers’ points of view, especially since there are people with extreme opinions

on this matter. The main source for seeing these commercials created based on pranks is

Youtube. The website is definitely one of the places where consumers go when they want to be

informed about fresh news. After all, “in January of 2009, 100.9 million viewers watched 6.3

billion videos on Youtube, or 62.6 videos per viewer (Comscore 2009)” (Retrieved from:

Campbell, Pitt, Parent & Berthon, 2011). It is where most consumers look at the videos

connected to prankvertising and discuss them. Most of them are unsure if this is a sustainable

model for gaining publicity, but under the #publooshocker commercial, a big per cent of them

are affected by it. Spreadable Media informs us that: “People don’t circulate material because

advertisers or media producers ask them to, though they may do so to support a cause they are

invested in” (Jenkins, 2013). This is precisely why this ad is slightly different from the other

prankvertisements. It is related to a cause – stop drinking and driving. The creators are relying on

the fact that people will like and spread it because they are possibly invested in this cause. And it

is working – after examining 120 comments I established that in 73 of them the video was shared

via Google+ and 45 of them included hashtags. This evidence supports my argument that the

people are affected by the ad and they have a need to share the message. It is shared both by

other channels representing causes or organizations and people with personal channels. To

illustrate with an example, commenter Christopher Donohue (6 months ago), after sharing to

Google+, states: “The power of viral campaigns. This one has a message. #viralmarketing

#drinkdriving”. Other users describe the advert as “powerful” (Jim Munro – 6 months ago) and

part of them, as Gurjit Bhullar (6 months ago) goes as far as to write: “Hello Community, I heard

about this new ad for a new campaign to save a life. Once you see this ad it will definitely

change your life. It is probably the scariest ad for this message but sometimes that is what is

needed to save a life”.

We cannot leave out another important factor that shows us users’ opinions of the

#Publooshocker advertisement. Youtube always shows us how many people pressed “like” and

“dislike” to inform us of their point of view. In other words, this section can be referred to as a

system of appraisal, and as Henry Jenkins states in Spreadable Media, appraisal is “a highly

rationalized process designed to determine an object’s absolute value. Yet appraisal is also a

negotiation between different systems of evaluation, determining not only the object’s value but

also how that value can be measured”. In Youtube the appraisal is measured via the likes and

dislikes, and under this video there is a significant difference between them with 20, 106 likes

and 2008 dislikes. Thus, so far all the examined portions of the Youtube advertisement –

comments, shares, likes and dislikes, lead to the assumption that the ad has had the wanted effect

on consumers. Since we established that Youtube is the main source for consumers to see

prankvertisement videos, we can acknowledge that most of them saw the video there – it is also

possible that they saw it somewhere else and then opened it on Youtube anyway, maybe because

they wanted to engage in a discussion or maybe because they wanted to see what others think

about it.

When it comes to creativity in advertising, it is safe to say that prankvertising techniques have an

impact on everyone. However, this impact varies depending on many factors – a large part of the

consumers in general believe that companies have went too far this time only to promote a

product. However, when looking at the comments under this specific video, this is not exactly

the case. As explained earlier, this ad is not the typical example of a prankvertisement, because

the main goal is not to promote a product for consumption – it is to make people aware of a

cause, a campaign created to help them. Therefore, based on the comments, it can be argued that

people believe it is not bad to go too far when trying to have a positive impact on society,

because there is a possibility that it is the only way to assure their attention. After all, there is no

argument that the media have changed, and with that change comes also the change in the

relationship of the audience to the media (Russell, 2009).

When we think about change in advertising, we should consider what provoked this change in

the first place. This paper argues that to a large degree it was the shift towards an attention

economy. “Attention, at least the kind we care about, is an intrinsically scarce resource; And, yet,

attention is also difficult to achieve owing to its intrinsic scarcity” (Goldhaber, 1997). Of course,

companies and advertising agencies are fully aware of that, hence – the need for a more

provocative model of advertising that will draw attention to the product or, in this case –

campaign. As Goldhaber states while discussing his paper during a conference: “What just

happened? I had your attention and I was able to convert it into a physical action on some of

your parts, raising your hands. It comes with the territory. That is part of the power that goes

with having attention”. Hence, we can assume that when companies create campaigns with the

intent to evoke fear and shock in us, they are hoping the attention we give them will lead to a

physical act on our behalf – this physical act can be buying the product, sharing the video,

engaging in discourse about it. Another study also has a similar conclusion: “…and the goal of a

stunt, such as our beauty shop scare, is often to earn attention versus buying attention with an

audience. When it's successful, the attention you earn greatly exceeds the cost of buying an equal

amount of exposure with that audience." (Gianatasio, 2013). It can be assumed that engaging in

discourse is probably the most important factor when it comes to a campaign like this one. It is

created to scare people from drinking and driving. When consumers start discussing this video,

due to the fact that they connect their Youtube channels either to Twitter or to Google+, their

friends also see their comments. It can be seen from the comments that there are many situations

where a person shares the video and then his connections start discussing it under his post, and

afterwards – share it themselves. So, the creators were seemingly relying especially on discourse,

since it is the instrument that drives people to share what they saw.

Taking this into consideration, we can state that the #Publooshocker video is successful in terms

of spreadability and discourse connected to it. Users clearly take interest in the subject and do

not consider the advertisement just “a marketing heart-attacktic too far” (Mahdawi, 2013, Oct.)

as they do the prankvertising trend in general. Therefore, we can take away that if used for a

good cause that will affect society in a positive way, this new advertising strategy has not yet

backfired and it will possibly have a long lifespan if done properly. Although prankvertising has

not been around for a long time, a number of companies have used it to promote their products,

among them Coca Cola, Sony, TNT, Samsung and LG. Starting in 2012, it does not seem like

this trend is going away just yet. Nevertheless, until now the #Publooshocker advertisement is

the only one where prankvertising is used for a good cause. It is possible that is started a new

movement in using this marketing tactic to do good instead of only for a personal benefit.

Conclusion

This paper has explored the reactions and willingness to share of the youtube users under the

prankvertising advertisement #Publooshocker. Based on the facts and assumptions that were

stated earlier it can be taken away that so far the majority of people commenting under the

advertisement are reacting quite well to it and do not hesitate to share it with their friends and

acquaintances. Maybe it is due to the fact that they feel invested in the cause, or because they

like the shock tactics that were used to get the message through, but they do help in spreading it.

Thus, since there have not yet been many studies of this new phenomenon in advertising, this

paper contributes to the existing literature and hopefully paves the road ahead for more in-depth

studies of prankvertising.

References

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Academy of Political and Social Science, 611(1)

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http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/prankvertising-are-outrageous-

marketing-stunts-worth-risks-148238

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