5 Brands Doing Ridiculous PR Stunts on Purpose | Left Hand Agency CPG High Five
Last month was a lot. A perfume that smells like candy corn. A purse shaped like cake. A meat stick longer than a football field.
You'd think a media buyer would roll her eyes at PR stunts. I don't. A good stunt gets people talking for free, and it gives your paid media something to ride on. The best brands plan both at the same time. Here are five from the past few weeks that made me laugh, and a couple that made me a little jealous.
1. Snapple borrowed the most famous money pit in New York
In 2022, Pete Davidson and Colin Jost bought a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry at a city auction for $280,000, while reportedly "very stoned," per Davidson.
Four years later, Snapple renamed it the "Snapple Island Ferry" and turned it into a free, one-night comedy club docked at Pier 17. Davidson admitted the Snapple idea made more sense than anything else they'd considered, and it still didn't make much sense. Here's the sneaky part. The whole thing was a promo for Snapple's return to glass bottles in select New York stores. It stole headlines and that was the whole idea.
2. The Laughing Cow stopped laughing
After a century of grinning, The Laughing Cow is frowning on select packs of Creamy Original wedges, next to a QR code and the line "We need to talk." (The four scariest words in the English language, by the way.) Videos on the campaign site show her sitting alone in a diner and swinging sadly by herself.
Best detail: shoppers noticed the change and started asking the brand what happened before Bel Brands even said anything. This only works because that smile is one of the strongest brand assets in the category. Still, these kinds of PR stunts require more than a passing familiarity with a brand and can fall flat if the brand overestimates its cultural cache. I’m vaguely interested in the answer but not enough to seek it out.
3. Betty Crocker went to Fashion Week
The Betty Ate Collection is a trio of $89 handbags shaped like cake slices, made in vegan leather, with labels that match the cake mix boxes and a red spoon zipper pull signed "xo, Betty." They sold out in 13 hours, and a second drop landed on the first day of New York Fashion Week.
Here's what the purse is really selling. Betty Crocker's mixes and frostings are rolling out in new packaging with brighter colors and new photos. Nobody shares a press release about new box photography. They share a purse shaped like cake. The purse is the ad for the box. And Betty isn't alone here. Chomps did a rotisserie chicken bag and Capri Sun did a purse, so apparently food handbags are a whole thing now. If you’ve ever been on the floor at Expo West you know that the bags… they are a whole thing. As a side note: my daughter loves the show “Is It Cake?” and I’m hoping they somehow work these purses into that show as well.
4. Brach's made candy corn perfume
Ode to Candy Corn is Brach's first fragrance ever, with notes of vanilla, spun sugar and honey. It went for $22, and it was only sold in two timed drops online. Candy corn is gloriously divisive. Not quite black licorice levels, but it's up there.
I'm Team Candy Corn, always have been, and I think the whole fight is hilarious. Plenty of people would rather find a toothbrush in their trick-or-treat bag. What’s so great is that the fight doesn't hurt sales. Brach's says it was the No. 1 seller in the seasonal candy aisle last year. Every hater online yelling about how gross it is just helps the launch. My favorite part: the press release had to include a note that the perfume is for external use only because someone out there was gonna win a Darwin award.
5. Slim Jim beat its own world record
On September 9, Conagra got a Guinness World Records title for a 429-foot, 5-inch Slim Jim, which is longer than a football field and weighed nearly 70 pounds. The record it beat? 314 feet, set by Slim Jim in 2023.
So they are in a heated rivalry with themselves. A team of 11 employees had been working on it since June 2025, and it had to stick to the real recipe, snap included. Once it was certified, employees got to take celebratory bites. I’ve talked about Chomps growing fast by bringing new people into the meat snack aisle before. Slim Jim, the one I grew up with, answered by building a stick the size of a parking lot.
Also worth a look:
Strawberry Frosted Donut, Cinnamon Roll and Vanilla Latte scents, sold only at Walmart. Febreze felt the need to remind everyone that the products aren't edible. Dunkin' already did donut-scented body care with Native, so it's slowly turning your whole house into a Dunkin'.
"Terrors of the Tailgate" is a set of '90s-inspired monster trading cards starring Jason Kelce as the King of the Tailgate, with Kingsford getting its own card, The Flamekeeper, who controls the meat, the fire and the vibe. About 90 minutes after the $5.99 packs dropped, Garage Beer posted that only 50 were left. That may be more of a testament to Jason Kelce’s status over Kingsford though. (Side note: The Kelce bros are officially over-exposed - I love them and am very tired of them)
The takeaway from these PR stunts
None of these needed a giant budget to get noticed. But the stunt is only half of it. A stunt with no media behind it is a one-day story. Put them together and you've got something people remember.
We are Left Hand Agency, a CPG media buying agency helping brands grow with short and long-term strategies. Our memory-driven strategies deliver results your marketing and finance teams will champion.
