4 Basic PR strategy from The Boys

Everyone loves PR. Why wouldn't they? It's basically "free real estate" for companies who knows how to ride the train of popularity. But what do you do exactly in PR? Here are 4 basic PR lessons from Vought International, a giant in PR, and some of the examples from real life cases.

Vought International is a fictional corporation specialized in the hero industry in the amazing show: The Boys.

I. Do charity

People love free stuffs. Anybody who disagrees can just go into a random Facebook's minigame contest and see what people willing to do for a 50k VND worth of product. Spoiler alerts: a lot. Charity is well-received by the public for the same subconscious reason as Jesus Christ. Dude straight up gives people food and wine for free whether they lynched him or not. There is not a one size fits all charity type that every companies should use. If it was, the PR disaster that was A-Train visiting the cancer patient wouldn't have happened. So how should a company approach charity, exactly?

The true manifestation of lazy yet greedy people

Some said the best approach to charity is from the heart, which I politely disagree. The heart parts is required, yes, but for the guy who is directly doing the charity, which is A-Train in The Boys situation, not the strategist. The strategist should only focus on 2 things: sustainability and controlled visual. Couple TX is actually a great example of these 2 criteria. Their annual charity involves taking used clothes donated by brand's users and re-made them for the poor folks on the highland part of Vietnam. Follow up with this charity trip is of course a lot of people in uniform, delivering branded jacket to the people, a very pretty visual. If you went to their Facebook page, you can see the public shows more and more support through the years. It's also help that their frontline CEO looks very passionate, and attractive, in these projects.

II. Get into entertainment

People loves entertainment. Amusement parks, toys, movies, TV, games are all billion or trillion dollars industries. Beside getting people to associate your brand with good time, entertainment is a phenomenon tool to slowly brainwash people. "Brokeback Mountain" is the best example of how a single movie can leads to a whole new era of LGBT support movement.

Businesses, regarding entertainment-based or not, should get at least one foot into the industry. There are tons of way to do this, from making rap advertisements (like every Vietnamese brands in 2020), producing limited merch like McDonald's or simply brainless sponsorship to a non-related things like Tiki. Vought did all of that: movies, merch, talk show appearance and more. If your superhero can appears on FMCG products like Homelander pees, being hated is next to impossible.

When you make it into porn, you are literally everywhere.

An excellence real life example of using entertainment for PR actually comes in this year when US congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortex used "Among Us" to promote people to vote in 2020 election. Politic is such a serious matter yet she was able to soften it up and appeal to the mass by incorporating entertainment. Her stream on Twitch broke the record for the 3rd highest attendance of all time, got reposted by other million sub streamers, highlights, even news channels on YouTube and won a tons of love from every US citizens ever. I would argue that her action actually helped Biden in a way since they are both democratic. I will not be surprised if she will ended up being the future U.S president.

III. Boobs sell

People love boobs, men and women. There's no need to over-analyze this statement. I know it, you know it and Vought definitely knows it when they make Starlight that new uniform. The best part is boobs sell! Here are some fantastits examples:

• Xvid and PHub are among the top 10 most visited websites.

• Playboy, at one point of time, sold 7.1 million copies.

• Everyone comes to Hooters, the 420 stores chain breastaurants, for the hot wings, not for anything else.

• Kate Upton brought Carl's Jr a whopping 120,000 new Facebook fans, 104% increases in website visit, +24 points impression from audience between 18-34...

• The late 1990s to the early 2000s was the best time for WWE, at least in term of viewership. The Attitude era has been the most loved era of all time thanks to it's amazing stars, edgy storylines, tons of violence and don't forget sexy divas in bra and panties match.

• American Pie, a low budget softcore teenage porn , made over $235 million worldwide with a $10 million budget. It subsequently spawned 8 more sequels, all of which made at least $230 million back.

• Aba most viewed ads, Volleyball, had a whole boobs in the thumbnail. It reached 51M views, compare to the brand's average 10M views. They changed it to another thumbnail afterward for some reason...

• That nameless sunglasses selling lady with huge personalities that you always see on your Facebook livestream. Fun fact, you can type "that girl who sell sunglasses online" in Vietnamese and her video is always be on top.

Vought in the comic is a heavy believer of this strategy.

IV. Go woke or go broke

People love to receive special treatment. More importantly, people are bored af. Peace time lacks that juicy struggles and conflicts that fuel our live with joy, hence the birth of victim mentality. If there ain't no war to harm us, we will start a war ourselves. Me Too, Black lives matter and cancel culture has forced brands to either pander or suffer a nice public pitchfork to the ass until they do. When the series begin, Vought has just recruited Starlight to substitute for Lamp Lighter in the Seven. This increases the number of female to 2, which abide the no-one-asked-for Bechdel test. For those of you who are unfamiliar with bullshit concept, a movie needs to include at least 2 named female characters whose conversations shall not only revolve around man are deemed non-sexist. Vought's move was proven to be a success when Starlight instantly becomes a fan favorite. In season 2, Vought added Stormfront into the line up and ran a whole campaign promoting girls' powers across multiple channels.

There are countless woke campaigns in recent years. Black, women, black women, black lesbian women, black lesbian fat women, you name it, there's already a brand who did it to various successes. If you are contemplating a wokeness campaign, just keep in mind to not do a 180 on yourself and you'll be fine. But the pediment of wokeness in the 2010s that I want to highlight is not a form of marketing campaign, instead it is a movie: "The Shape of Water". The movie won best picture in 2018, putting some massive candidates like Get Out or Three Billboards into the ground. The 2018 best picture winner "unintendedly" has a disabled female protagonist, a black woman as a sidekick, a gay old man as a friendly neighbor and don't forget the cherry on top: a straight white male rapist villain. Also the beast is a clear metaphor for slavery.

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The Boys is an amazing TV series that somehow blend superheroes with PR perfectly. There were much more than 4 lessons from the show so if you should check it out if you read this far. If you are interested, please subscribe so you won't miss my follow up article: "Advanced PR lessons from The Boys".

Quanny Nguyen