Hollywood and the White House are fabricating them every day.

Marketing in today’s time and age requires more than just exposing a product or image to the public.  With stiff competition media institutions, filmmakers, and other groups and individuals have to play some publicity stunts in order to set themselves apart from the rest and take people to notice. 

In that respect, political issues are sensationalized, celebrities go all the way to publicly show demeaning behaviors, and other fancy publicity stunts that either catch the public’s ire or get their commendation.  How ever the stunt is carried out, and regardless of how the public is taking it, publicity stunts will always have one common goal – to create a ripple in the media and draw out attention.

Who wouldn’t agree to the fact that the gullible public is falling for these kinds of marketing strategy?  And, if you think publicity stunts are as old as humans fighting mammoths and have become ineffective stints, think again.  Why do you think Britney Spears or Paris Hilton is still able to pull them off?  Both of them, as well as other personalities, became huge names in Hollywood due to publicity which are subtly carried out as if to unintentionally publicize bad stories of their private lives.

Publicity stunts should be considered as some form of art in media.  It can be organized by professionals or set up by amateurs.  The aim, of course, is to introduce a new name or face, or keep it alive in the public’s mind.  This will require more than just calling a press conference, which will need something to talk about other than a new TV series, album, movie, or single.  This is why even the late Elvis Presley had to join the army in 1958 to escape banishment in the creative wilderness.

This and other examples give the definition of a “publicity stunt”.  It is a planned effort or event designed in such a way as to attract the public’s attention.  It’s a marketing strategy in a sense which goal is to elicit a media frenzy and, consequently, the general public’s interest.

Some publicity stunts are outright trivial while others are so serious they involve risking lives, and entail political and economic implications.  After all, publicity stunts are just “gimmicks” but many had been so effective as to have created a major stir in a nation.  Many publicity stunts pulled off by celebrities or politicians in the past, however, were subject to debate for a long time because they are closely fastened to a celebrity’s private life. 

Remember Britney Spear’s one-day marriage or Dennis Rodman presenting himself as a bride?  How about Oprah Winfrey’s Pontiac giveaway?  From a citizen’s viewpoint, these can be easily mistaken as a lewd course of indecision or plain publicity.  Publicity stunts are creatively designed so that people often fail to recognize them as publicity, and yet they clearly have achieved their goal.

Common Kinds of Publicity Stunts

They come in such great number but when you study publicity stunts closely, you’ll probably notice how they are alike in many respects.  Studying professionally-fabricated publicity stunts can help in your own quest to catch media attention.  Here are two of the most common kinds of stunts you’ve most likely encountered in the past:

Vulgar projection of oneself – notice how some new celebrities go to the extent of projecting lewd self-image, or “bad” image because, psychologically, this is what people like to emulate.

Extending humanitarian help – helping calamity victims, doing extra-ordinary charity work, distributing expensive items to beneficiaries, and the like are sure head-turners.  This style can be in any form and used by different entities both public and private.

Publicity stunts will always be gimmicks and they can also turn sour in time.  When you’re not in Hollywood or the White House, just try to deviate from negative publicity stunts that will do the opposite rather than help you meet your publicity goal.