For a long time, PR ran on one fuel: attention. The louder the stunt, the bigger the headline, the better the perceived success. Everything was designed to stop people in their tracks. Shock them, surprise them, confuse them, entertain them. It worked for years because the public still had the appetite for spectacle.
But something has changed, and you can see it clearly in 2025.
People are no longer impressed by volume. They are more aware, more skeptical and more exhausted by the sameness of marketing. Attention for the sake of attention has stopped being clever. More importantly, attention has stopped converting into trust.
This is why PR needs a reset.
The world is full of brands creating noise without meaning. A trend goes viral, and suddenly every brand copies it until the original spark disappears. You can see it in the apology-letter format that swept across Instagram. One brand opened with a dramatic “We apologise,” making it look like a crisis note. People clicked instantly because apologies are powerful. But instead of regret, the letter flipped into a smug brag about doing good things. The shock value worked once. Then every brand copied the format within days. What was once witty quickly became predictable.
This pattern exists everywhere in PR.
Take the old but still overused “world’s biggest” or “world’s smallest” stunt. Brands create the world’s biggest chocolate bar or the world’s smallest car to score easy Guinness coverage. It worked the first few times, but when everyone uses the same formula, it signals creative laziness more than innovation. Audiences recognise the gimmick instantly.
Or consider shock hoaxes like Taco Bell’s famous Liberty Bell stunt. In the 90s it caused outrage and broke the news cycle because people genuinely believed it. But when modern brands try their own versions of fake shutdowns or staged kidnappings, the reaction is very different. Fever FM and a few Indian influencers tried fake alerts and surprise shutdowns as teasers. Instead of feeling intrigued, audiences felt manipulated. The emotional trickery does not fit today’s cultural climate.
Even brands that try to play with internet culture often miss the mark.
There was a time when self-roasting campaigns felt refreshing. Zomato, Netflix India and Burger King pulled it off with humour and awareness. But once smaller brands started pretending to mock their own flaws with forced jokes, the charm disappeared. Self-awareness cannot be manufactured.
The same thing happened with fake rival brand banter. When two companies genuinely compete, playful banter can feel fun. But in recent years, brands have tried to recreate these dynamics artificially. Forced rivalries between products that have no connection cluttered timelines and made audiences roll their eyes. When it is not real, it feels like a corporate attempt at virality rather than personality.
And of course, who can forget the era of the pet interns.
For a while, brands introducing their first “Chief Barketing Officer” or letting a cat “take over socials” felt cute and quirky. It worked because it added warmth to corporate feeds. But when every second brand tried the same trick, it became another templated move. People saw straight through it. What begins as authentic personality becomes performance when copied endlessly.
Even big corporations have made mistakes chasing attention. Sony’s fake fan blog for the PSP is still referenced in marketing textbooks. What seemed like a clever grassroots tactic instantly collapsed when gamers discovered it was artificially created by a PR agency. That is the risk with deception. It may go viral but it never builds trust.
The repetition does not stop there.
Look at tone-deaf attempts at cultural stunts. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign began as a meaningful cultural contribution. Then came awkward product designs and racially insensitive visuals that revealed how quickly purpose messaging can slip into performance when brands lose self-awareness. Let’s not forget the recent PR disaster that came with Sydney Sweeney’s great jeans campaign for American Eagle. What began as a sizzling hot ad starring the Euphoria actress, ended up with people associating them with Nazi’s for striking the chord at gene superiority. Audiences do not forgive easily when it feels like a brand is using social issues as props.
Even the classic “Brand X vs Brand Y” comparison wars have lost their spark. Pepsi and Coke did it at a time when advertising wars were new and exciting. But modern attempts, like YouTube personalities staging Lunchly vs Lunchables comparisons, feel scripted. Comparison campaigns only work when the rivalry has real roots. When brands force it, the audience sees through the strategy instantly.
All of this points to the same truth.
Virality has stopped being a sign of relevance. It has become a sign of desperation.
Audiences in 2025 want something else. They want stability. They want clarity. They want brands that know who they are without needing to hijack every trend. People appreciate humour and creativity, but they prefer sincerity over spectacle. They reward brands that communicate with intention rather than chasing the algorithm like a slot machine.
This does not mean PR must become boring. It means PR must become honest.
Instead of fake shutdowns, tell the truth about what you are building.
Instead of a fake rivalry, share real values.
Instead of a pet intern gimmick, show real humans behind the brand.
Instead of another “world’s biggest” record attempt, create something useful.
Instead of apology flipposts, apologise when it matters and speak with humility when it doesn’t.
Instead of copying a meme format, create a narrative that survives beyond the meme.
The Brands That Survive Virality Are the Ones That Create, Not Imitate
If there is one brand that proves this, it is Durex.
While most brands chase internet trends like tourists chasing souvenirs, Durex has quietly built a category of its own. Their campaigns are not reactions to whatever is buzzing online. They are original cultural statements. Their “Sorry, we were faking it” campaign flipped a provocative phrase into a message about sexual honesty and instantly became a conversation starter. Their festive wishes, whether cheeky Diwali innuendoes or their clever new year posts, travel across timelines not because they fit a trend but because they sound unmistakably like Durex. Even during crisis moments, such as when a misinterpreted ad drew criticism, the brand did not panic. They responded with calm clarity, positioned the conversation around education and earned more respect than outrage. Durex does not compete for virality. It outlives virality by being consistently original, consistently bold and consistently itself.
This is exactly what most brands miss.
They treat virality as the goal instead of the by-product.
When a brand chases what is trending, it sounds like everyone else.
When a brand understands itself deeply, it becomes the trend.
The audience today can smell inauthenticity instantly. They can tell when a post exists only because six other brands posted something similar. They can sense when a PR stunt was built backwards from an algorithm rather than built forward from a belief.
Virality is temporary. Trust is cumulative.
Trust grows from consistency, not chaos. It grows when brands speak with a voice that does not change every week. It grows when stunts are replaced with strategies. Most importantly, it grows when communication feels like it is meant for humans, not for the metric dashboard.
The industry must move away from performing culture and toward reflecting it with responsibility.
Enough with the hoaxes, the fake notes, the staged rivalries, the gimmick interns, the templates.
If everyone is doing the same trick, the trick loses power.
The next era of PR belongs to brands that stop trying to look interesting and start trying to be trustworthy.