At the time of writing the political world in the UK is in even more of a disastrous state than normal. What an opening line to this week’s Good and Bad PR!

Boris Johnson

He’s gone! Well, not quite, but despite clinging on to the end, Boris has, at last, resigned. One thing he does still head, and that is the top of the leader board for Bad PR. And all because of the lies and misinformation spread by him and his inner circle.

The Chris Pincher scandal appears to have been the final straw for the two senior cabinet ministers who quit on Tuesday evening, heading a landslide of resignations on Wednesday and early Thursday. These two key resignations were not because of the terrible things Pincher is accused of, oh no, but because Boris and his team lied to the cabinet. It seems, in my mind at least, Rishi and Sajid don’t mind the public being lied to, but as soon as BoJo was nailed for lying to them as well, they found their backbones and got out of there.

It is hard to imagine how the reputation of the Conservative Party can recover from the battering it has received over the last few months.

Mars

Moving on to some slightly less dramatic (unless you are a pet) Bad PR and Mars has got itself into a spat with Tesco that has resulted in Pedigree Chum and Whiskas pet food being pulled from the retail giant’s shelves. Similar to the Heinz vs Tesco story last week, Tesco is refusing to accept the price increases being asked for by Mars and as such has now had its supply chain pulled.

This paints Tesco in a positive light especially as these brands have a significant amount of consumer loyalty and as such, the move could mean shoppers would switch to rival retailers to get their favourite brands. Tesco received support from an unlikely source this week courtesy of rival Sainsbury’s, which put out a story saying that consumers are now turning to own brands to address the cost-of-living crisis. Supermarkets sticking together, whatever next?

EasyJet

Sticking with Bad PR and the travel industry is showing no sign of slowing down with its own PR drama. Peter Bellew, chief operating officer of EasyJet is the latest C-suite casualty of the airport and flight cancellations drama as he went off to spend more time with his family, and this comes just a few short months after the MD of Manchester Airport did the very same.

It seems like this was a poorly timed announcement because the day

after the news broke, EasyJet had to then announce a further load of

flights were being cancelled due to industrial action taking places

across Europe. Surely Bellew’s exit could have been announced a day

later to try and show that the company was taking decisive action.

Crisis communications 101 gone wrong there.

Good PR

PR Agency One

With all this doom and gloom I think it is important to end on a high and let’s give the only Good PR of this week to PR Agency One for the launch of Myrkl, a hangover recovery tablet. The coverage this launch brought was nothing less than amazing and seeing the agency MD (and industry legend) James Crawford talking about the sales that his client was reporting as a result of the PR activity really warmed my cockles.

You can tell a story is doing well when a group of annoyed muggles try and bring it down and as soon as this reached peak media saturation, out they all came to try and put the boot in. I am glad to report that James and his brilliant team handled this brilliantly and I salute them for a fantastic product launch.

Got it right or wrong, you know what to do.

Written by Andy Barr, owner of 10 Yetis Digital. Seen any good or bad PR lately? Abuse and contradictory points welcomed over on The Twitter @10Yetis or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email