Stunt Watch prides itself on including the best creative executions without prejudice. If it’s a great execution by one of your client’s rivals, it still goes in. If it’s a great execution by an agency who just nicked your favourite account director, we rise above it. If it’s an idea that beat your idea to win a pitch, we’ll probably insist that someone else writes it up, but it won’t be written off.

One Green Bean x Domino’s

However, this writer has to admit some confirmation bias for the work One Green Bean does for Domino’s. It’s always a bit cheeky, always fun and categorically does not take itself too seriously; three essential traits for best-in-class consumer PR.

All of these traits were present in their latest work, a ‘Slice Security’ safe box for University students. The insight was simple, the execution smart. With Freshers Week on the horizon, it's likely alcohol will impact taste buds and hungry students’ morals…food will be stolen. Therefore if you have some leftover pizza, it can go in the safe box that can only be unlocked with a security code.

This device is superb because it takes out two enemies. Obviously nobody likes a food thief, but I would argue that people who passive aggressively write their names on milk are even worse. This solution eliminates both, and though I still worry the security box will be seen as a challenge to overcome by some alcohol-fuelled larcenists, we know what the real message is here. Domino’s gets students, so students should get Domino’s.

A strong haul of earned coverage and lots of likes, shares and comments across all socials, this is a pizza stunt that will take some topping. (Sorry, not at all sorry.)

Cheez-it x Rylan Clark

In a recent awards judging panel, I was taken aback at the hostility towards campaigns that had a heavy celebrity presence. Of course there are some god awful examples, but the snobbery felt slightly out of kilter because, when done well, celebrity work should be celebrated.

With that in mind, I wanted to shine a light on two celebrity launches I saw in the wild that nailed that shortcut to earned coverage. One is purposeful and the other is shamelessly cheesy.

Starting with the latter, I saw in the Evening Standard that Rylan Clark had a new cheese-related tattoo. My PR senses were tingling, why did he have a cheese-related tattoo? Turns out he’s only become the big cheese for the all-American brand Cheez-it — which is basically the US version of Mini Cheddars.

I am a big fan of brands that know what they are and ‘Cheez-It’ does not hold back on, well, being cheesy. A pun-infested launch party saw the creation of ‘The Cheezmasons’ (get it?) - a secret-society of cheese lovers who gathered to celebrate in a house of cheese that had a series of cheesy executions that played on our nation’s love of cheese.

Rylan? Cheesy. Kimberly Wyatt? American cheesy. Getting cheese-based tattoos? Cheesy. This one probably is not one for the chin-scratchers at Cannes, but when your product is all about giving ‘cheese hits’, then you should hit the public with cheese and that’s exactly what The Cheesmasons did. Nearly 200 pieces of coverage later and that’s a cheese-hit for cheese-its and should leave the client well-pleased, not cheesed off.

Born Free Foundation locks up celebs

For the final addition to Stunt Watch, it’s Kirsty Gallacher in a cage. No, this is not a repeat of her drink-driving exploits, but rather a clever stunt to highlight the horrific lack of space big cats have in captivity for the Born Free Foundation.

Situated in Leicester Square, Kirsty was joined by Born Free’s other celebrity ambassadors - Amanda Holden and Jenny Seagrove who were also fully-caged and helped generate a sea of coverage for the charity’s campaign to return wildlife to the wild. As someone who is convinced zoos will be ‘cancelled’ in our lifetimes, I love this campaign and this idea was a smart visual, but would it have got the coverage without some decent talent in the cage? I’m not so sure.

Heineken’s ‘Behind Bars’ campaign could have been done without Ross Kemp, but it’s immediately better with him, the same is true here. This is why celebrity should not always be seen as cheapening creativity, sometimes they make good creativity seen.