10 Yetis Examples of Good and Bad PR - Tuesday 14th August 2018

Good morning sports fans, the Premier League is back but so is the English summer; the sun was nice while it lasted! Anywho, I'm back to take a look at the good and bad PR from the past week...

Good PR

This first story is great news for music fans and terrible news for soulless touts looking to rip people off; it's the news that Ticketmaster will be closing down their secondary ticketing sites 'Seatwave' and 'GetMeIn'.

The resale sites came under criticism for allowing touts to make massive markups, by reselling tickets for much higher than face value. The sites are set to be replaced by a fan-to-fan exchange, that will allow fans to sell tickets to each other at face value, or 15% either way.

Secondary ticketing sites have come under heavy criticism from the media and artists alike, so whether this was done out of the kindness of Ticketmaster's heart or not, it's still a great move in the fight against touts, and welcoming news for music fans everywhere.

Great PR campaigns always teeter on the edge of controversy, and that's exactly what WWF Singapore achieved with their recent 'Ivory Lane' project.

The charity created a fake store that posed as a vintage ivory retailer, using provocative ad slogans such as 'ivory is a secret desire for most girls'.

The shop raised uproar all over the social medias, before it was revealed as a stunt by WWF Singapore - to highlight the loopholes involved in the Ivory selling market. Whilst controversial, the campaign raised a great deal of awareness, so in my eyes should be viewed as a success - Elephants are great!

Bad PR

We've all played Monopoly and know how frustrating it is when someone owns all the properties and charges you every time you roll the dice, and this is what Whistl, formerly TNT, experienced in reality with Royal Mail.

This morning Ofcom have fined Royal Mail a record £50m for doing just this; in 2014 they raised their prices to make sure all competitors that used them would have to pay more where they still used RM for delivery.

They were found to be abusing their dominant position in the market to ensure they remained the dominant force, and have therefore been fined.

Heathrow airport has come under criticism this week, after edlays meant passengers were queuing for as long as two and a half hours in July, massively missing its target of 45 minutes or less.

The delays have come under heavy criticism from airline bosses, and there are already plans in place to send 200 extra staff to the airport to combat the problem.