Definition

A calculated publicity move designed to generate media attention and improve image perception, sometimes involving celebrities falling off motorcycles on purpose. It's marketing that looks accidental but is meticulously planned.

Example Usage

The influencer's 'spontaneous' charity donation was clearly a PR stunt to rehabilitate their image after the scandal.

Source: Public relations and marketing terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

tear sheet

A physical page torn from a publication proving an ad ran as purchased, or its digital equivalent screenshot. The receipts that media buyers clutch when things go wrong.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

funnel

The marketing visualization showing how thousands of potential customers magically transform into a handful of actual buyers, shaped like an inverted cone of broken dreams. Each stage represents another opportunity for prospects to ghost your business entirely. Sales teams love drawing these; conversion rates love destroying the optimism they represent.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

soft bounce

When your email gets temporarily rejected—maybe their inbox is full, their server is having a bad day, or Mercury is in retrograde. Unlike hard bounces, there's still hope for future delivery.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

rhetoric

The art of persuasive speaking or writing, or alternatively, inflated language designed to impress rather than inform. Politicians and marketers have elevated rhetoric to a professional sport where style matters more than substance. When someone says "that's just rhetoric," they mean "that sounds impressive but means absolutely nothing."

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Advanced

incrementality testing

An experimental method to measure whether your marketing actually caused an outcome or if it would have happened anyway. It's the uncomfortable question every CMO avoids: did we waste our money?

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

time on site

The average duration visitors spend on a website during a session, measured from arrival to departure or timeout. It's a metric that can't distinguish between engaged reading and forgetting you left a tab open.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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