Stunt Watch: WSL draws attention, Samsung goes all arty and Centrepoint gets real

It’s beginning to look a lot like Stunt-mas, but this week’s Stunt Watch is an entirely Santa-free affair courtesy of Burson's Greg Double.

Let us begin...

WSLs Subway League Cup draw

First up, a note on a scandal. The Subway League Cup draw took place this week, a women’s football competition you’ve likely only heard of because of how ‘badly’ the draw went. For the uninitiated, a ‘cup draw’ decides which two football teams will play against each other. In men’s football, it is normally a very sensible, straightforward affair that passes without incident, humour or drama as two ex-pros solemnly pick numbered balls out of a bag to decide the fixture.

This week, the WSL and its title sponsor decided to do things a little differently. GK Barry and her professional footballer girlfriend Ella Rutherford livestreamed the draw in a Subway, and it was pure chaos. She literally dropped the balls, joked about being a lesbian when handling the balls and even suggested that Tottenham Hotspur are not a very good team.

The backlash was intense, but not immediate. The TikTok stream did serious numbers and sentiment was initially positive, but then those that really hate women’s football - and more interestingly, those that really love women’s football - found it…and that’s when the backlash really got going. For the haters, it was proof that women’s football isn’t to be taken seriously. For the lovers, it was an example of women’s football not taking itself seriously.

But here’s the point—it wasn’t meant for either of those audiences. It was meant to broaden the base, get ‘adjacent audiences’ interested, and there are metrics to suggest that there were successes here. You could even point to the avalanche of coverage to prove that ‘talkability’ and ‘awareness’ are through the roof. So this stunt was actually a massive triumph, right?

Not quite. I love what they were trying to do with this and women’s football should never stop disrupting, but on this occasion, it was just a bit too messy.

The haters can go swivel, but the lovers need to be brought on the journey, and by disrupting a part of the game the core audience and stakeholders genuinely value (the draw), they went a step too far. To borrow from Neil Warnock, “by all means deploy GK Barry, but deploy GK Barry by being disciplined”.

Samsung's TV art

From football boots to car boots and a really fun one from Samsung. 

Did you know that car boot sales are now hipster? Did you know buying affordable art is now popular? Well, they are…and this provided an enjoyable backdrop for the Samsung Frame—the TV that looks like, well, a picture frame.

One of the coolest features of the Samsung Frame is that you can download hyper-realistic-looking art onto its HD screen, so when the TV is on standby, you don’t just get a black screen, you get some art on your wall. We’re talking Monets, Van Goghs and Da Vincis, but without having to rob the Louvre (again). Your TV is art, your art is TV. Hang on, might that actually be art in itself?!

We digress. Anyway, some hipster-looking sorts took the Samsung Frame, displaying £4.6bn worth of artwork and set up a stall at the achingly cool Birchmere Park car boot sale. Cue genuinely startled onlookers (is it a bird, is it a frame?), a heap of artsy coverage and an impressive slice of new attention for a TV that now hasn’t been new for nearly a decade.

Centrepoint gets festive

Lastly, when I said this was a Santa-free zone, I was both lying and telling the truth. Centrepoint’s ‘Winter Wanderland’ exhibition is a Christmas campaign, but it’s about people who don’t experience Christmas.

Located at London’s Outernet, the immersive experience invited visitors to step into a deceptively charming winter scene, where the stories of young people who have experienced homelessness are told through the objects that helped them survive their darkest moments—a stark reminder of the resilience of young people facing homelessness.

Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park attracts 2.3m visitors every year, and while Winter Wanderland will not get those sort of numbers, its impact will last longer. So instead of spending £12 on a barely-mulled wine, maybe send your money to Centrepoint and help get one of the projected 23,500 homeless young people a roof over their heads instead.