Good and Bad PR: Chester Zoo, tech bros and wet wipes

The daffodils are blooming, the bluebells and snowdrops appear to have come and gone, which means that we are finally, only days away from the start of spring. Let’s go!

Chester Zoo leads calls for weather app makers to refresh and review the icons they use

At first glance, this story looks like a puff piece, but then you dig into it and you can see the financial impact and importance. Chester Zoo is at the forefront of a campaign, supported by 80 other tourist destinations in the UK, that is calling on the weather app companies to rethink how they show the weather forecast on their smartphone apps.

They are quite rightly highlighting areas, including the use of a single cloud with a rain icon for a whole day, which can result in lost visitor numbers, when the reality is that the weather may be dry for the majority of that time period. The attractions report that an adverse weather forecast can result in an average 30% reduction in numbers from people thinking of making a spontaneous visit. The financial impact of this is huge, but the solution will clearly not be simple.

The MET Office took the brunt of the media storm and said that it was looking to improve its forecasting, which shows it might be missing the point a little bit. Very few people trust weather forecasters, and that is not up for debate. The issue is that the weather apps cannot rely on using just one blanket icon for a 24-hour period. See, even I get it!

Great PR for Chester Zoo.

Forbes’ rich list is dominated by tech supremos

Forbes released its latest billionaire rich list and regular readers may expect me to make some comparison with Bond villains, but that would be incredibly puerile. Yes, Elon at number one will cause some to grimace, but the rest of the top ten is dominated by his fellow techpreneurs.

Only three of the spaces in the top 10 are not from tech money. Only two of the top 10 are not from America, which further supports the ‘land of opportunity ’ line that the American marketing machine loves to use. The media loved dissecting the list, and in a world where celebrity and wealth are overlapping societal movements, it got all the headlines.

Forbes may have had a tricky time of late with Google messing with its domain strength across the community and UGC areas, but stories like this will never grow old in the eyes of the muggles, and they have bossed it.

Great PR for Forbes.

Wet Wipe product recall due to contamination concerns gives brands a headache

Parents of infants across the UK were rushing to check the name of the wet wipe company that they use this week. 6 deaths and 62 hospitalisations were caused in the UK by 4 brands of wipes that had bacterial contamination.

It may seem a little snobby of me to say that none of the affected brands was what marketing land would call tier-one household names. This could explain why the big-ticket media glossed over the story and left it to the syndication mob, hungry for clicks.

The images that accompanied many of the write-ups involved sad-looking mums and hastily taken pics of the affected packets. It comes at a bad time for the wet wipe community. In December, an environmental report found that some of the wipes that were branded as being biodegradable and eco-friendly took up to 5 months to degrade. Good job that the conglomerates that own the big wipe brands have a few bob they can pump into refreshing the reputation of the industry.

Bad PR for the wet wipe industry.

American and Israeli action in Iran starts to hit home in the UK

As I have said repeatedly, this column is never going to cover the more gut-wrenching stories that are out there. The American and Israeli action in Iran firmly falls into that category.

So far, apart from lobbing reputation grenades at Starmer, the UK has had little impact. That is now starting to change. The cost-of-living crisis, which was never that far away from the front pages, is creeping back toward the top of the news agenda. This is a direct result of the conflict.

Heating oil is going up, petrol prices are going up, and lower-cost mortgage deals are being pulled, with the Iran conflict being cited as the main reason. So whilst Big Don is claiming everything is going well, he once again fails to take into account the global consequences of his tantrum-like actions.

Global Bad PR.