10 Yetis Examples of Good and Bad PR - Monday 16th July 2018

Happy Monday everybody. This weekend saw the culmination of the PR-rich World Cup and unfortunately England were not playing yesterday, or I would probably not be writing this today. On the (literal) bright side it’s still sunny and shows no signs of letting up, but anyway – here’s this week’s good and bad PR.

Good PR

As I’ve already mentioned, this year just wasn’t to be for the England national team and their fans, coming agonisingly close to the final after crashing out in the semis on Wednesday (3^rd/4^th playoff game doesn’t count).

However, despite not quite making it all the way, Southgate’s team did what no other team has done since 1990 by reaching the semi finals, and more importantly has done what no other team has done in an extremely long time; unite the nation behind the squad.

Gareth Southgate and the boys have somehow managed to get everyone behind them, and have been honoured as such, at train stations amongst other places. My favourite example of this comes courtesy of TFL and Visa, who teamed up to change the tube stop ‘Southgate’ to ‘Gareth Southgate’ to commemorate the journey he took us all on.

Everyone’s favourite American President was in town this weekend, if you hadn’t noticed, and with him came unprecedented protests against him, included a giant baby balloon.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Paddy Power placed a lifelike wax statue of Oprah Winfrey in front of the US embassy, with the odds they’ve given for her to become next President (20/1). Gauging the mood perfectly, Paddy Power are likely to have seen a number of punters going in for those odds.

Now here’s a heart-warming story for you all, courtesy of Aerie: American Eagle’s lingerie brand. Increasingly, companies are waking up to the need to be more inclusive, and that people with disabilities need to be represented as well.

Shout out to Aerie who recognised the need for this, and in their latest campaign have included models with visible disabilities, which is a great step in the right direction.The move was hailed as refreshing and more representative, and more of it is needed!

Bad PR

This week’s bad PR features bears and submarines; not often two things that go together. Build-a-Bear were offering a promotion in their stores that sounded too good to be true (although unfortunately it wasn’t); a pay your age offer that allowed customers to buy a bear up to £52, for the small price of their child’s age.

At a massive shock to absolutely nobody, offering discounts of up to 98% (if your child was one year old) caused massive queues outside the stores, some reportedly up to a mile long. The company had to cancel the deal in many places, with police having to be called out to control the queues. A good idea executed badly is putting it nicely.

Last week we received the fantastic news that all of the boys and coach of a Thailand football team were rescued safely from a cave they had been trapped in for a couple of weeks, thanks in part to British diver Vern Unsworth.

However, the heroics of the divers have been somewhat overshadowed by a spat between Mr Unsworth and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Vern Unsworth claimed that Musks mini-submarine would not have been able to help the rescue efforts and branded it a PR stunt.

This seemed to offend Mr Musk and his ego, and in an ill-thought out Twitter rant challenged Mr Unsworth’s claims, and in the midst of it all made unsupported claims that he was a ‘pedo guy’. A real shame after the heroics of the divers and all involved.