PR Stunt Watch: A CPR bra, tackling London’s phone theft problem and the return of the McRib

CPR BRA

Here's an alarming stat: women are less likely to receive CPR in public than men. This is all centred around the taboo of touching someone’s chest, causing men to worry that they would be accused of inappropriate touching.

In response to this, St Johns Ambulance and Fight or Flight have launched the CPR Bra campaign which aims to save lives by busting the taboo around chest compressions and touching breasts. Albeit there was a great opportunity for a busty pun to bust taboos.

Styled by some key figures, the bra features a consenting “It’s okay to save my life” message on the front and a reminder of the steps needed to respond to a cardiac arrest.

My favourite part of this is that it turns the famous phrase said in PR offices around the country “It’s PR not ER” on its head, CPR and using a defibrillator can more than double a person’s chances of survival. This is quite literally a campaign that could help save someone’s life.

The Unsnatchable Phone

The plague of city centres and a story that always hits close to home with people because every six minutes a phone gets snatched in London‍.

Creative agency Joan has created The Unsnatchable Phone case, the first cover of its kind, made with Anti-Snatch Spike Technology, although the practicalities of putting it in your pocket become somewhat limited. Complete with my favourite line: “Forged by the fury of Londoners”, the design itself is quite the statement.

The launch video features the phone being stress-tested at the most snatched location in London (Oxford Street). Created to make Londoners feel a bit safer on the streets.

The McRib is back

Within the theme of breaking formats, this isn’t a traditional stunt. The McRib is back, but we’ve known it’s coming back for a while, all because of a ‘leak’ filled campaign.

McDonalds took to every channel they own to tease the re-release of the fan favourite, seamlessly weaving in ‘glitches’ and ‘human error’ into everything from its billboards - although the digital board on my way to the tube is always glitched and broken - to its social featuring broken files with the name ‘McRib_Test.notification_16.10.24 [TEST]’. It even went as far as to change the in-store music and to really utilise every channel to the max, a test push notification was sent from the McDonald's App in ‘error’.

The result is that everyone knows that the McRib is back, organic social has been coming in from fans of the brand, and the campaign has been an all-round success.

Plus, writing this has made me very hungry.