The Best PR Stunts of 2025

Every year, brilliant PR stunts redefine the limits of creativity. So far in 2025, the best publicity stunts didn’t just grab headlines and spark media attention; they captured our hearts and messed with our minds.

If you’re hungry to create your own breakthrough campaigns, these viral publicity stunts offer essential lessons in what works.

In this article, we highlight five PR stunt examples that got our attention in 2025. Pick up practical insights and use some of these bold moves to inspire your own outside-of-the-box public relations strategies.

PR stunts vs. PR campaigns: what’s the difference?

Before we dive into our pick of the best publicity stunts of this year, it’s worth clarifying a common mix-up. A PR stunt is a one-off, attention-grabbing moment designed to spark buzz, start a conversation, and land media coverage. A PR campaign, on the other hand, is a series of planned communications rolled out over time to build awareness, shift perception, or strengthen brand reputation within a broader public relations strategy.

In other words:

• PR stunt: the spark. A bold, short-lived move that lands media coverage.

• PR campaign: the fire. A strategic, sustained effort that builds lasting impact.

Many of the most memorable cases sit somewhere between the two. A publicity stunt can kick off a campaign, and a PR campaign may use stunts as fuel. The 2025 stories below show how both tactics, when done right, can create cultural moments people don’t forget and why smart PR teams often blend both approaches.

How PR stunts generate media impact

One of the biggest goals of any publicity stunt is to capture the attention of media outlets, spark widespread media attention, and become a viral moment. When done right, a stunt can lead to earned media opportunities, from news articles and interviews to social media mentions. The ripple effect often includes significant social media engagement, with audiences sharing, commenting, and creating their own content around the moment. Most importantly, a well-executed PR stunt can have lasting effects, strengthening brand reputation, credibility, and community engagement over time.

PR teams can amplify results by pairing a publicity stunt with a well-crafted press release, ensuring journalists and media outlets have the details they need for accurate coverage. Strategic media placements not only extend the life of a stunt but also create ongoing earned media that continues to generate visibility long after the initial event.

The best PR stunts of 2025 (in our humble opinion) didn’t just rely on the spectacle itself. They were designed to drive earned media across multiple channels, creating conversations that reached millions. When PR teams coordinate stunts with strategic press releases, social media strategies, and targeted media outreach, the result is a multi-layered campaign that maximizes earned media, boosts media attention, and builds brand credibility.

1. The Office as Spectacle by Apple TV+ and IKEA

Severance is a dystopian drama on Apple TV+ that follows a group of office workers whose memories are surgically split, which creates a stark divide between their work and personal lives. It’s a literal and unsettling take on the concept of “work-life balance.”

To promote the release of Season 2, Apple TV+ installed a fully functional glass office inside Grand Central Terminal in New York, where members of the cast performed live inside the space. Delighted commuters and passersby could watch the show’s stars at work.

In this brilliantly simple display of art imitating life (or office culture), Apple TV+ blurred the lines between performance art, marketing, and immersive theatre. The stunt delivered an estimated $5.27 million in Earned Media Value (EMV).

According to MediaWorth here are the results grossed on social media:

• Instagram delivered the highest total EMV across all post types: $3.2M. 

• TikTok organic content generated $1.7M in EMV.

• Twitter conversations generated $210K in EMV.

Meanwhile, IKEA India capitalized on the “Severance effect” with a straightforward campaign to promote its office furniture. 

In an eerie recreation of the Severance office setup, IKEA promoted an acoustic divider from their Mittzon office furniture line with a reference to the show in the tag line: “For work that’s mysterious and important. Innie or outie, everyone deserves privacy.”

Why the campaigns made the ‘Best PR stunts 2025’ list:

• Cultural commentary: Both brands tapped into collective anxieties around modern work culture.

• Visual theatre: The Apple TV+ installations were impossible to ignore. It drew crowds, generated real-world buzz, grabbed the attention of several media outlets, and sparked many conversations online.

• Location: Apple TV+’s setup in the middle of Grand Central Terminal guaranteed a stream of commuters familiar with the office routine that unfolded inside the surreal glass enclosure.

• Ownable territory: IKEA demonstrated its knack for blending practical design with popular culture, turning a simple publicity stunt into a clever product showcase.

2. Miley Cyrus x TikTok

To celebrate the release of Miley Cyrus’ latest single, “Something Beautiful,” Mojo Supermarket and TikTok gave a select group of superfans personal invitations from Miley’s account. These fans believed they were being invited to an early listening party.

About 100 superfans gathered at the Chateau Marmont and were stunned when Miley Cyrus herself walked out to treat them to an intimate performance of her new song, as well as fan favorites like “The Climb.”

Why it made the ‘Best PR stunts 2025’ list:

• Community reward: Fans were incentivized for their loyalty and curiosity. At the same time, TikTok was showcased as the ultimate platform for fan and artist connection.

• Platform-native: The stunt felt organic on social media. It resonated with TikTok’s culture of discovery and trends.

• Exclusivity: Participants could unlock hidden rewards, which gave them bragging rights and highly shareable content.

• Viral loop: Mojo Supermarket shared live interviews with fans before the event. Fans amplified the campaign on social media with their own before-and-after content.

3. Canva’s ‘Unforgettable Billboards’

How do you announce you’re the official design partner for the United Kingdom? Canva disrupted the Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising space with playful “wrong-but-right” billboards around London’s Waterloo gallery. 

Layouts that looked amateurish but revealed clever design references showcased Canva’s ease of use. It also poked fun at bad design. For example, a billboard that advertised the platform’s background remover literally had no background. 

Why it made the ‘Best PR stunts 2025’ list:

• Tongue-in-cheek: The “bad” designs caught attention, while clever punchlines drove the message home.

• Relatability: Anyone who has ever dealt with design software tools could identify with the publicity stunt.

• Product showcase: Each billboard spotlighted one of Canva’s core workplace tools, exaggerated to create a moment of surprise and delight.

• Shareability: The billboards doubled as memes and spread like wildfire on social media. 

4. Coors Light’s viral typo

In another viral moment that brilliantly played on our collective fear of making mistakes, beer brand Coors Light intentionally printed a typo on a billboard erected in Manhattan’s Times Square. 

The error fuelled online outrage, which was amplified by independent agency Mischief. After a while, Coors Light owned up to the “mistake” and dubbed it “a case of the Mondays.” 

The campaign cleverly tapped into the universal dread of “the Monday after the Big Game” (in this case, Super Bowl), which many consider the most dreaded Monday of all. The brand took the joke further by releasing special “Case of the Mondays” beer packs as well as a face roller to help consumers “chill.” 

The creative stunt sparked a remarkable 400% surge in social media conversations.

Why it made the ‘Best PR stunts 2025’ list:

• “Negative” attention used well: Coors Light owned the “mistake” to such an extent that they rebranded as “Mondays Light” for a limited time in 2025.

• Scarcity marketing: Collectible cans created a sense of urgency and sparked even more social buzz.

• Relatability: Everyone makes typos. Coors Light leaned into this tension for the ultimate payoff: Next-level brand awareness.

• Earned media: Coverage spread beyond beer fans into mainstream conversations.

5. Kalshi’s AI-generated NBA Finals ad

Prediction market platform Kalshi landed serious media coverage earlier this year when it aired the first fully AI-generated TV ad during the NBA Finals. 

You might be thinking, “That’s an ad; not exactly one of the best PR stunts of 2025.” We get it. But here’s why it earned a spot on this list:

1. It was produced in 72 hours with a $2,000 budget (about 95% lower than standard TV commercial costs).

2. It was created entirely without humans. 

3. It featured scenes like an alien downing a beer.

4. Within 48 hours, the ad generated about 18 million impressions.

If you felt as nervous as we did when we first watched the ad, it succeeded in its goal. The surreal, slightly uncanny spot tapped into our collective anxiety about the future of AI and sparked debates about advertising and the role of creativity in it. 

Why it made the ‘Best PR stunts 2025’ list:

• First-mover advantage: As “the first” in a high-profile arena, the brand gained historic visibility.

• Conversation starter: Audiences debated whether AI could replace human creativity. The brand was positioned at the center of the conversation.

• Media multiplier: The novelty guaranteed coverage in marketing, tech, and mainstream press.

• Brand positioner: The stunt-like campaign aligned perfectly with Kalshi’s innovative, future-forward brand identity.

PR success stories 2025: Key takeaways

There’s a clear thread that runs through this year’s most creative PR campaigns: the brands that come out on top don’t just sell products, they sell memorable, much-talked-about moments. 

The takeaway: Creativity that feels bold, participatory, and just a little risky is what gets our attention. The stunts that stood out weren’t necessarily the biggest. They just made us stop, share, and talk, proving that the right publicity stunt can punch far above its weight.

Keen to make your brand engagement stunts unforgettable? PR.co helps you create high-quality press assets, distribute them effectively, and track the impact of every PR stunt so your creative ideas don’t go unnoticed. Schedule a 15-minute demo to learn more.

Need more inspiration? Explore our round up of best PR stunts of 2024 and our pick of top PR campaigns from 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.