10 Yetis Examples of Good and Bad PR - Monday 9th July 2018

The weekly dose of Good and Bad PR comes from Molly Triscott today, who is spending the week with us doing work experience. I hope you enjoy reading her picks as much as I did!

The Church of England will no longer be funding or investing in companies that are not making conscious efforts to reduce climate change. 347 members of the Synod voted to withdraw from companies by 2023 that are not meeting the Paris climate change agreement, a convention that deals with the depletion of gas emissions mitigation, adaption and finance. The Bishop of Oxford explained how The Church of England needs to hurry up with this process, but it is impressive to see such a traditional organisation setting the example for future progress. The world is beginning to realise the concerns that arise with pollution (in some cases, quite literally) and that using your car just to drive to the chip shop up the road isn’t exactly environmentally friendly.

Bad PR

On the 7^th of July DJ Khalid was set to perform his headline set at Wireless festival in London, but on the day, the 42 year old R&B artist failed to even show up. A vague announcement was tweeted by the festival 12 hours prior to the set time, explaining that there were complications with travel due to the filming of The Four. Although Wireless have held their hands up and admitted to knowing “for a few months”, their honesty doesn’t distract away from the fact they didn’t tell anyone for months. If this wasn’t frustrating enough for fans at the festival, DJ Khalid decided to post a picture of him and his son chilling in a resort swimming pool on to Twitter accompanied with the caption ”Still on vacation!!!!!!!!!! ”

I don’t know who was more thoughtless, Wireless Festival for not telling their attendees the truth from the start, or DJ Khalid for enjoying his holiday too much.

On the 13^th of June, it was announced that Russia would be hosting the 2018 World Cup. Russia is recognised for Communism, real vodka, Maria Sharapova and, sadly, its open homophobia. LGBTQ+ fans have struggled to be a part of the sport especially as the World Cup has seen anti-gay propaganda being chanted and threats continue to be aimed at anyone who is LGBTQ+ and planning on attending the last of the matches.

Enter Budweiser, who have upset the LQBTQ+ community. The lager sponsors the World Cup, which would be fine if they weren’t also sponsoring New York City Pride at the same time. Voices4, an activist group fighting for “global LGBTQIA liberation” took to Instagram and called for their 18k followers to write #PrideOverGenocide on Budweiser’s account. Budweiser is continuing to ignore the upset.

Ryan Air has got 99 problems and all of them are from the cabin crew. At the top of the list, employees are requesting fair living wages and are even threatening to go on strike during the summer season if some of their demands are not met. Ryan Air is not taking care of their internal communications and is now dealing with the consequences; I wouldn’t be happy paying for my lunch at airport prices every day. Cabin crews in Italy have already announced that they will strike for 24 hours on July 25, followed by Spain, Portugal and Belgium for 48 hours – peak times for family holidays.