10 Yetis Examples of Good and Bad Public Relations - Thursday 26th July 2012

Jul 26th 2012

Good PR

My example of good PR today involves the National Forest Adventure Farm near Burton on Trent, Staffordshire. With so many Olympics-related stories in the media currently and such stringent rules and regulations when it comes to piggybacking on the London 2012 games for advertising and the like, it's nice to see a good old fashion PR stunt get around that.

Midlands farmer Tom Robinson took to one of his fields down on the farm to create a huge tribute to Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt. A huge maze was cut into one of the farmer's 15 acre fields of maize, depicting Bolt in his "To Di World" pose and with the words 'Lightning Bolt' and 'Go Usain' above and below the image.

I've already seen the coverage in the Metro and Mail Online, so it was a good move for the farm and a nice visual story.

Bad PR

So the Olympics has got off to a cracking start, hasn't it? People constantly whinging about traffic problems in and around London (quite rightly), the whole G4S debacle, controversy surrounding the Olympic advertising regulations and then London 2012 organisers go and display the flag of North Korea's rival nation South Korea on the big screen at the North Korean women's football team's first Olympic match at Hampden Park stadium ahead of their game with Colombia.

The North Korean women's team stormed off the pitch in protest and didn't return until the faces of the team members had been shown on the big screen alongside the correct flag. Oops! Something tells me organisers won't be making that mistake again!