5 things I learnt from managing my first ‘PR protest’

PR stunts get a mixed reception. To make them a success we have to walk a fine line between a stunt that’s all gimmick and no purpose and a stunt that seems so real that the eventual discovery of its inauthenticity causes backlash. It’s not an easy job, especially when the media have become extremely wary of stunts and tend to shun anything that smells too much like PR.

When you get it right though, the results can be phenomenal.

I recently took part in managing my first big stunt in the form of a protest. It was led by a world-leading Dolly Parton tribute act, The Dolly Show, who enlisted our PR support to help her and many other tribute acts who came forward to share the story of their ongoing struggle with tech giant Meta and how it’s hurting their careers.

Tribute acts and impersonators are having their professional pages removed from Facebook and Instagram by Meta for supposedly violating the community standards. These standards mean that anyone impersonating someone else could be banned. Of course this is a big problem if your livelihood comes from being an impersonator.

After Meta refused to acknowledge the issue or comment, we stepped it up a notch and organised a protest with a group of tribute artists outside of Meta’s offices in King’s Cross. It was a PR stunt through and through, conceptualised by our agency, organised by myself and our creative director and planned down to the last gimmicky detail – megaphone chants, placards – the lot! And yet, despite the obvious PR element, it was a roaring success that the media covered in droves. 

Here are some of the things I learnt about managing a PR stunt from this experience: 

1. Size doesn’t matter (as long as you’ve got great visuals)

It doesn't always take a huge number of people to stage a protest that gets noticed. Numbers are one way to go, but the other is having great visual elements for photographs. Our protest consisted of just six tribute artists, but they were all dressed as their on-stage personas which made for fantastic photo opportunities and broadcast shots that journalists loved. 

We focussed our whole strategy on the ‘look’ of the protest. Getting Dolly Parton, Britney Spears and Freddie Mercury look-alikes holding placards and shouting in chants a megaphone outweighed the small size of our protest with big, colourful visuals. It worked because it was small-scale, proving that size doesn’t always equate to impact with stunts.

2. Gimmicks can work

We know that gimmicks can be a bit of a risk. Overdoing it can undermine your entire stunt but, when thoughtfully chosen, gimmicks can heighten your success. I saw this in action with the placards we had designed for the event, which were particularly popular with journalists that turned up on the day. 

They were full of puns and professionally designed (so not authentic at all) but they were essential in selling our protest narrative. Gimmicks work when they add something to the story you’re telling, and in our case it added to the all-important visual of our protest. 

3. One picture speaks a thousand words

With brilliant stunt visuals achieved, getting that visual to live longer than the event itself is the real challenge. Hiring a professional photographer was a high priority for us, so that we had high-resolution images to share with the media. We also focussed on inviting journalists from broadcast and picture desks, knowing that one great photograph or video would tell our story better than any press release. 

Images also helped us before the protest too. A week before, we sent journalists on-stage photos of the tribute acts that would be there on the day, knowing that visual motivation was needed to entice them to attend the protest. Don’t just save the visuals for after the event, they can really help drum up interest in advance.

4. The cause still needs to be legitimate

The gimmicks and visuals can only get you so far if there’s no real purpose to your stunt and, even if you have a purpose, it’s just as important to make sure that message is understood loud and clear throughout. Again, we used the placards and megaphone to support this on the day. Our Dolly Parton tribute act was brilliant at chanting and sharing her story of losing thousands of followers. 

But behind the scenes, we made sure that journalists knew the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of our protest via press release in advance. We also briefed each of our protesting tribute acts to share their personal stories in as much detail as possible in any interviews. It was this genuine purpose that helped to tip our PR stunt into legitimate national news. 

5. Make sure the media get whatever they want on the day

My final and most important learning from the day was that, although we’d planned every detail of the protest, the journalists wanted more – and that was great! It was our job to give them whatever they wanted, from interviews to specific shots or photographs and even b-roll and footage of the acts on stage that we shared afterwards. 

There was a lot going on the day but I made sure to check in with every journalist there to ask if they’d got everything they wanted for their coverage ­­– if they hadn’t, I found a way to make it happen. We needed them to go away confident that they had the best content possible for editing to ensure we got the coverage we wanted. 

There’s a time and a place for PR stunts, and they don’t always fit the bill. But from this experience I know that strategy, planning and a little bit of flexibility are our biggest assets as PRs for making these kinds of events an award-winning success. 

Amy Stone is senior communications consultant at Hard Numbers.
 

Editor’s note: Facebook’s policy states that is doesn’t allow people on Facebook to pretend to be someone well-known or speak for them without permission and Meta’s community standards do not allow accounts that "impersonate or falsely represent" a person, brand or business. Meta says it allows fan and tribute act Facebook pages and Instagram accounts if users state they are not "speaking in the voice of" that person or brand.

A Meta spokesperson said: "We’ve always allowed tribute acts on Facebook and Instagram, and we know our platforms play an important role in helping these communities connect with fans. Our technology sometimes makes mistakes and we’ve reinstated a number of pages and accounts that were wrongly removed for impersonation.

"We understand how frustrating this can be, which is why we encourage tribute acts to make it clear in their bio or profile that they’re not the real individual."