Good Beckham vs Bad Beckham
The start of this week kicked off with a bloody big bang
for brand Beckham, now aptly dubbed as ‘Bexit’, as the eldest (now
ostracised) Brooklyn Beckham, took to the favoured instagram stories for
a tell-all tale of the bubbling family feud which has been dripping
through ink of the tabloids for months.
I won’t use up my word count and
time to explain the story, as I’m sure you’ve probably already seen it,
but it was an explosive, headline making an office-gossip goldmine,
which in turn meant that it was on the tips of the tongues of PRs up
and down the nation.
When a reactive opportunity presents itself like this, account leads everywhere are asking how they can jump on it.
A scramble of ideas falls around, which client can this
work for? What would be funniest? How can we get in on the headlines? In
that speed of idea turn around, we seldom stop to ask, should we jump on this?
This section isn’t a battle of morals, but a battle of taste. Two reactive ideas, with very different tastes.
Up first, On The Beach, who quickly mocked up a fake ad
with a new campaign centred on a special ‘Beckham clause’: available in
case family fallout drama scuppers your holiday plans.
Done very well, the hands replicate Beckham’s tattoos and
the tearing of the ticket to “Brooklyn’ (to what I assume is Coney
Island Beach, Brooklyn…. ha) had all the visual queues that aligned and
worked well. The copy left a bit more to the imagination, a
bit forced and clearly pushing a very fake service that if someone – hopefully the family that diverted my flight to Spain a few years ago –
did try and claim would be met with a very robotic reply.
The second, a reactive social post from Yorkshire Tea,
which mimicked the visual style of Brooklyn’s (or are we supposed to
believe it was his) essay, switching the narrative to be about the
spoons controlling the story around tea. Very funny, very on brand and
something that worked perfectly for the platform.
Two stunts, with very quick turnaround and to very
different tastes. Reactive stunts take us back to our purest form; they
can be and should be some of the best work PR’s do, the ability to think
quickly, get it made and get it out is an art and doing that art well
is what sets the PR industry apart from other creative sectors.
Image credit: On The Beach/Yorkshire Tea
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