Hey hey Public Relations fans. Another slow news week really demonstrates how crazy the last few years have been in terms of elections, Brexit, Covid and Captain Trump dominating the news agenda.

Odd PR

Shrek

The slower pace has allowed some odd stories to creep through such as the Guardian’s hatchet job on the legacy of Shrek 20 years on from when it was first released. Go and have a read of the review by TV and Film critic Scott Tobias. It set the lefty Twitter brigade off but I actually found it very funny.

Bad PR

Bitcoin

On to far more important news stories from the week. After a somewhat spectacular rise that involved the golden hand of electric car whizz Elon Musk, Bitcoin has now tanked again and gets the nod for bad PR of the week. Whilst Musk had a hand in its most recent rise, the Lord of Electric has also had a massive hand in its demise. As you would expect, it was all played out on Twitter and it has left everyone who piled into the most famous of all the crypto-stocks crying into their online share trading platforms.

Good PR

Aliens

Aliens get the nod for the first Good PR courtesy of the most dynamic man in politics, Obama, confirming that there is credible footage of “things” in the air that the government science folk of America just can’t explain or understand.

Personally, I am starting to feel that “The Aliens” must have one of the top PR agencies on a retainer, or maybe campaign project. If you look at the number of credible mentions that the creatures from space have had over the last few years, I am convinced that they are slowly being introduced to us, the general masses.

In 2020 The Pentagon released “unidentified aerial phenomena” footage, the first time that a government department has done such a thing, and then in 2021 they released another video. One can only presume it’s a slow burn campaign, but I am all for it!

Revolut

Back down to earth with a bang and the second Good PR goes to fintech brand Revolut. It’s newsjacking of the pub re-openings worked beautifully thanks to them crunching the numbers of which regions spent the most in pubs on the first day of their seating-in-doors re-opening.

I’m proud to say that Gloucestershire once again led the way with one of our more yocal areas, Stroud, chinning the most amount of pints per hour compared to anywhere else in the UK. Excellent reactive work by Revolut and once again demonstrating that the simple things work the best.

UK government

Let’s end on another high for the UK and dare I say, the UK Government. As we all know, Eurostar has been on its arse thanks to the pandemic and as it quietly circled the plughole, there was growing pressure from The French government that its UK counterpart should stump up some of the bail-out cash that was needed. A guy currently in the spotlight for all the bad reasons became the accidental hero of the hour, David Cameron.

It turns out he had flogged our shares in the tunnel train in 2015 for £750m which now represents quite a good deal. The UK government was able to step back and wash its hands of any bailout. Before you could say “au revoir”, the French government caved and had to bail out Eurostar themselves. Brexit fans and train spotters alike will no doubt be celebrating!

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