Last month, photos circulated on gossip sites like TMZ and MailOnline of actor William Shatner eating a bowl of Raisin Bran in his car and clutching the cereal box as if it were his most prized possession.
The bizarre paparazzi shots had some observers scratching their heads, until Raisin Bran pulled back the curtain: Shatner’s cereal-obsessive behavior was just a setup for the brand’s Super Bowl campaign.
It’s a strategy we’ve seen before. Two years ago, CeraVe pulled the same trick with “Michael CeraVe.” Over a few weeks in January 2024, actor Michael Cera was spotted toting bottles of CeraVe lotion around New York City, and stormed out of a podcast interview when asked about his ties to the skin care brand. His odd public appearances fueled the rumor mill until CeraVe released a Super Bowl ad starring the actor.
Now that the Super Bowl has morphed into a weeks-long marketing spectacle, pranks and stunts have become a key part of advertisers’ playbooks. But as the pranks pile up, what happens when audiences can predict the joke?
Maximizing the investment
The shift toward elaborate stunts comes down to a few big changes in the media landscape.
While Super Bowl advertisers used to be solely focused on winning game day, the rising cost of an ad slot meant “that single moment wasn’t enough” to justify the investment, said Ryan Carroll, executive creative director of GSD&M.
The price tag of a Super Bowl ad slot has climbed to at least $8 million, with NBCUniversal this year selling a handful of 30-second Super units for $10 million or more.
Wanting to grab attention and get more bang for their buck, over the past decade, Super Bowl advertisers started turning their commercials into a bigger moment, releasing teasers weeks before the game. But now teasers are commonplace, too, and “the pre-Super Bowl window has become just as crowded as game day itself,” Carroll said.
Brands are also competing in a crowded landscape on social media, where attention is more fractured than ever. Pranks and stunts are primed for such an environment, said Ted Kohnen, CEO of Park & Battery.
“Social media rewards mystery and speculation. A weird celebrity sighting or unexpected activation becomes a breadcrumb trail audiences want to solve,” he said. “Stunts and pranks are a way to stretch a 30-second ad into a cultural moment.”
Such stunts also appeal more to younger audiences who are “increasingly skeptical of screen-only experiences and drawn to moments that exist in real life,” said Benjamin Diedering, founder and CEO of BDX Media.
What’s next?
These days, however, even stunts are becoming more “predictable,” making it more difficult to stand out, Carroll said.
Beyond CeraVe and Raisin Bran, there was Liquid Death hiring a witch to throw hexes from the stands in 2022; Tubi faking a streaming outage in 2023; Kendall Jenner bantering with her ex Devin Booker this year ahead of a Fanatics Sportsbook ad; and many more.
The question for brands now is whether audiences will tire of being pranked—or worse, feel manipulated.
Stunts that work best lean into “world building and conversation starting,” said Graham Douglas, co-founder and creative director of Gus. They also move beyond explicitly selling and start a bigger conversation, such as when Rocket Mortgage started an in-stadium singalong to John Denver’s “Country Roads” during Super Bowl 59, tapping into the universal desire for home, Douglas added.
“The bar will keep rising as more brands attempt public stunts,” Diedering warned. “A stunt cannot survive on shock value alone. Audiences—especially Gen Z—can always sense when something is trying to look rebellious while playing it too safe.”
Kohnen predicted the next phase of successful pranks and stunts will bring audiences in on the joke.
“Future stunts won’t just be watched; they’ll be co-created. Think real-world moments designed to be discovered and debated across platforms, powered by creators, AI, and live data,” he said. “The smartest brands will move from ‘Look what we did’ to ‘Look what you helped uncover.’”
Source: adweek.com