Immediate and holy theatre in PR

Immediate and holy theatre in PR: "

When you spend most of your career working on big brand PR you are forced to constantly question your ideas and those of your clients. The “So what?” factor applied to everything.

When you are surrounded by great, uncompromising and creative minds – the “So what?” question becomes an unforgiving tool that carves away at the “average”.

When really great brand-spanking-bowl-you-over ideas are generated, they make even asking the question “So what?” sound suddenly irrelevant. For example, with Cake’s unique screening of Titanic for Sky, re-naming of the fish Pollock to Colin for Sainsbury’s or Cold Beer Amnesty for Carling – a really great idea transcends the need to keep testing it with “So what?”.

The solution PR activity can provide brands, which differentiates it from other media routes, is that it can generate spine tingling human moments that will make individuals feel an immediate and then longer lasting affection for a brand. The feelings generated towards a brand through these moments can be comparable to what someone feels for their pet, car, family, bed, football team, favourite sporting event, most-loved film.

PR creates moments of connection – what Peter Brook calls “immediate or holy theatre“. Or should I say PR can do this. The truly creative agencies can generate these moments time and again, others may stumble upon them, others more often simply produce “deadly theatre”- in other words same old, same old.

PRs should ask themselves who they want to be, people who “answer the brief” or people who can create and envision moments that when they look back on their career they can say “some people will NEVER forget that moment” (and therefore also the brand elements at the heart of its generation).

Heineken have created a moment that simply from watching it on film I shall not forget. As for the people attending I’m sure they will be Heineken advocates for a long time to come. Wise and inventive use of Social Media can also make sure the long-tail effect of this activity is immense.

Heineken hats off to you.

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