Good and Bad PR: a pooch-tastic hotel and an unfortunate H&M hoodie

Good PR

A hotel in San Francisco made headlines recently for what was effectively a very simple and straightforward PR decision.

Hotel Nikko offers a pet package for customers wishing to bring their pooch to stay with them during their trip. The additional cost of your special furry guest works out at an extra £37 or so per night; which allows them use of a plush dog bed, food/water bowls and other doggy treats. However, this isn’t the reason the hotel has been featuring in the news of late.

Another part of the announcement, I guess as a way to push their dog-friendly status, was that anyone staying at the property who didn’t have their own four-legged-friend with them could order a doggo on room service. Pretty cool, huh?

Don’t worry though, the hotel doesn’t have a dark, cold storage room full of puppies that it can deliver to people’s rooms on request… it’s nothing sinister like that.

Hotel Nikko has its very own dog named Buster (full-name, Buster Presutti Posey) who acts as the COO (that’s Canine Operating Office, to you and me). He’s been a resident of the hotel since 2015 and anyone staying at the property can call down to reception to see if he’s available to be brought up for a few cuddles if they’re feeling lonely or want some canine company.

Buster’s cute little face has featured on the likes of the Metro, Fox News, Lonely Planet Travel and plenty of other titles thanks to the puppy room service that the hotel announced, which has been fantastic exposure. Those who hadn’t heard of the place already will now know all about the hotel’s dog-friendly services and Buster the room service pup. Did I mention that the hotel has San Francisco’s only rooftop dog run, complete with actual grass? I don’t even have a dog, but I am a fan of the species and know where I’ll be staying when I eventually get to visit San Fran.

Bad PR

Fashion retailer H&M had to apologise this week after a photo of a little boy modelling the brand’s clothing on its website was circulated around social media, causing total outrage.

A boy’s green hooded jumper with the slogan ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ written on the front was modelled by a black child, which some Twitter users described as racist and disgusting.

Some people were angered by the outrage, however, saying that it was people’s stereotypes that had caused these opinions and that the racism accusations were, in themselves, racist, like the tweet below:

if you’re offended by little black boy wearing a jacket that says coolest monkey in the jungle you need to look deep inside and heal some of stereotypes you’ve been taught that you are. black people are not monkeys just like that little white boy isn’t a fucking tiger. https://t.co/C2vDVMeSwP

— ¥uo (@sumyungg_) January 8, 2018

H&M removed the picture from the website, all channels and issued the following apology:

“We understand that many people are upset about the image of the children’s hoodie. We, who work at H&M, can only agree. We’re deeply sorry that the picture was taken, and we also regret the actual print. Therefore, we’ve not only removed the image from our channels, but also the garment from our product offering. It’s obvious that our routines haven’t been followed properly. This is without any doubt. We’ll thoroughly investigate why this happened to prevent this type of mistake from happening again.”

Rapper The Weeknd has also cut all ties with H&M, who he had a clothing line with, after seeing the news, tweeting the following which had received more than 100,000 retweets and 220,000 likes at the time of writing this.

woke up this morning shocked and embarrassed by this photo. i’m deeply offended and will not be working with @hm anymore... pic.twitter.com/P3023iYzAb

— The Weeknd (@theweeknd) January 8, 2018

Written by Shannon Peerless, 10 Yetis @ShazzaYeti on Twitter
Seen any good or bad PR lately? You know what to do @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email