You've just mentioned the topic yourself, giving it a little bit of attention and making others do so too, and you might well not have done that without these s

You've just mentioned the topic yourself, giving it a little bit of attention and making others do so too, and you might well not have done that without these stunts, or even had this opportunity. One thing such stunts do very well is ensure that people don't have that topic driven out of their minds entirely, anchor it there, even if it doesn't take center stage. That makes it much easier to activate through other campaigns, channels or even uncoordinated word of mouth, and while that may not seem like much, big corp marketing departments spend fortunes to do the same for their brands. Is there a risk that soup stunts will foster resentment to a degree that harms their goal? Absolutely, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. Most people appear to forget the stunts fairly quickly, whereas climate change as a topic is gaining traction, and while it's hard to attribute any of this directly to the various steps taken to foster awareness, it's well established that anchoring an idea in people's minds is a crucial basis for bottom-up action – just look at how the MAGA slogan has galvanized the US far right, to a large degree by firmly anchoring certain core tenets in people's minds, even those on the other side of the aisle. I'm wary of the downstream effects the current protests may wind up having, but I can't think of an alternative that's actually doable and that would have the same amount of impact.