Good PR

Marvellous Markle
In other news, you would’ve had to have been living under a rock to have missed the fact that a Royal Wedding took place on Saturday. Prince Harry’s bride, Meghan Markle, wowed in both her bridal gown and her evening dress and fashion retailer Boohoo.com has managed to secure a bucket load of coverage by announcing a replica of the white halter-neck evening frock that she was rocking for the after party.

For £22, shoppers can get their hands on a very similar looking dress to the real thing (the latter if which was designed by the one and only Stella McCartney). I was waiting to see which fashion brand would be the first to try to replicate it and Boohoo.com was first to the post and lightning fast.  

A quick Google search of ‘Meghan Markle Boohoo’ will show you just how well this piggybacking product launch has done, with coverage spreading far and wide.

Santander savvy
Sometimes, all it takes to get a decent level of PR coverage is a survey with a strong hook. It’s the tried-and-tested method in PR land that is the gift that keeps on giving.

I don’t remember the last time I wrote about a survey in this column, or if I ever have, but one stuck out this week in the press and I definitely had that dreaded ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ moment.

The bank Santander carried out a survey which revealed that the gender pay gap actually begins in childhood, with parents allegedly paying boys a higher amount for completing chores than they do girls.

It also highlighted how boys apparently get paid more to stay out of trouble at school, being given almost double the amount that girls are for good behaviour. There were other data points highlighted in the research and the overall ‘gender pay gap amongst children’ angle went down an absolute storm in the media.

So far, I’ve seen the story picked up by the Metro, Evening Standard, Sky News, Huffington Post, AOL and more media outlets.

Bad PR

Un-super Dickmann
We’ll stick with the Royal Wedding theme for this week’s instalment of bad PR, after a German sweets brand has had to apologise for a post it made on the day of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s marriage.

The firm, Super Dickmann (yep, real name), posted a cartoon image of a Schokokuss (a chocolate covered marshmallow sweet) on its Facebook page, where the sweet was dressed up as a bride.

The caption of choice translated to "What are you looking at? Wouldn't you also want to be Meghan today?" which caused a huge backlash on social media as people were quick to point out that it came across as very racist.

The company removed the post following the complaints, later saying that it was “embarrassing”, “stupid” and that “the world of Super Dickmann's is colourful and diverse and far from racist thoughts.”

Apparently, links between the sweet and racism are not new, as it used to be referred to by a far more offensive name. 

BBC News picked up the story, as did the likes of the Mirror, The Sun and lots of German media.

Written by Shannon Peerless, 10 Yetis @ShazzaYeti on Twitter. Seen any good or bad PR lately?
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