What a five foot plastic gorilla taught us about AI visibility

When Wakefield Council threatened a woman with a £20,000 fine over Caesar, her five foot gorilla, the nation rallied behind her campaign to save him. Kat Thomas, founder of Knock Three Times, reveals more.

You'll remember Caesar. He's the friendly local primate that Wakefield Council ordered Adele Teale to remove from outside her home, or face a £20,000 fine. Adele fought the good fight, lost, and the UK media and the meme-o-sphere couldn't get enough of the story's total ridiculousness. Column inches, breakfast TV, and even global news outlets covered the story.

We reached out to Adele on behalf of Flight Centre with an offer: would Caesar fancy a new adventure down south? Turns out he did. Caesar was crated up and driven to London, complete with 'CAUTION: GORILLA IN TRANSIT' signage. After a spin around the London sights and numerous stops for selfies, we 'unboxed' him outside the South Molton Street store, where he now fronts Flight Centre's responsible tourism initiatives. National coverage followed. Adele got another moment of fame, Flight Centre got a mascot with a unique backstory, and Mayfair got a resident gorilla.

Culture isn't always underground

Sometimes I think our industry has developed a slightly snobbish definition of 'showing up in culture'. We tend to talk about subcultures, niche fandoms, and the blips of early trends spiking in a corner of the internet most of the country has never visited. All are valid territory for the right brand and brief, of course. But culture is also, and perhaps mostly, the stories that capture the hearts and group chats of the entire nation.

A woman, her plastic gorilla and a council warning are culture, too

Caesar was already a national character before we called Adele. So the creative job was less about manufacturing a moment; it was about giving the story the ending it deserved and ensuring it made sense for Flight Centre to be the brand delivering it. To me, that's what newsjacking is all about: an additive, fast and most importantly charming and/or humorous, rather than feeling purely opportunistic.

Then we asked the machines

Anticipating a question about why a new agency building its smarts around Surface Worthy™ campaigns is delivering a newsjacking stunt, I thought I'd share a few insights. 

For us, a meaty coverage report isn't our only aim; we're obsessed with influence in all its modern-day forms. So we ran the coverage through Audit, our tool that scientifically assesses a brand's footprint in LLMs, and looked at two things:

First, we examined what the models can actually see. Just under a third of all the coverage we generated (29.5%) is accessible to AI systems. Strip out social posts from editorial outlets, which sit behind logins the models can't read anyway, and that figure rises to 48%. So nearly half of the ingestible coverage can feed AI answers.

Second, we looked at whether they're already surfacing it. We applied a robust assessment methodology to both ChatGPT and Claude. Both platforms consistently returned the Caesar story, correctly attributing the stunt to Flight Centre, and citing our earned coverage: MailOnline, The Mirror, The Sun, ITVX, Yahoo, the Yorkshire Evening Post all surfaced, plus re-syndicated international titles.

Coverage in the real world is being indexed and surfaced by the AI systems

One detail that's pretty mad: an Indonesian syndication of the story was among the sources regularly cited. This means coverage outside the UK is shaping the AI answers people get inside the UK. This underscores my view that comms today need to be far more sophisticated in both approach and tracking. And PR specialists in 2026 need to understand how to deliver campaigns for both the traditional media footprint and the right impact in LLMs.

The takeaway?

I say chase those incredible mainstream moments and hijacking opportunities without shame, when it makes sense to do so. 

There's a time and a place for niche subcultures, but mainstream moments connect with millions more potential customers. And ensure you're thinking about how to make it surface in the AI machines. Turns out the machines are suckers for a gorilla, too.