Good PR

The glorious sunshine and heatwave of the Easter bank holiday is now but a distant memory; but, hey, it was good whilst it lasted. Whilst it might be a little while before we can get the BBQ out again, the rising temperatures over the long weekend helped to remind us how rubbish we all are at dealing with heat above 20 degrees. We panic buy burger buns, forget to slap on the sunscreen and moan that it’s “too hot”.

Asda cream
Those suffering from chaffing and dreaded under-boob sweat took the opportunity to tell everyone who’d listen about a “miracle” cream from Asda that made the hot weather all the more bearable, resulting in some great media coverage for the supermarket and the product itself.

Asda Little Angels Liquid Talc, which is only 87p, has been praised on social media by multiple fans, leading to a string of recent media coverage on the likes of Cosmo, The Sun, Mirror Online, Pretty 52 and OK! magazine.

When anything like this happens, it usually leads to product sell-outs, so I wouldn’t mind betting that Asda has to up its orders of that magical liquid talc.

KFC stunt

In other news, over Easter, KFC said it was trialling a Hot Cross Bun Burger – a seasonal take on its classic chicken Fillet burger. The story got picked up everywhere, but it was really just a clever PR stunt with a photo of the burger; because chefs where apparently just testing it and it’s never going to make it to sale. That didn’t deter the media from covering it though and people were instead just encouraged to go to KFC, get a normal Fillet burger and switch it into a Hot Cross Bun at home.

Bad PR

Samsung Fold
There’s been a bit of a stumbling block in the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold device. With a price tag of £1,800, you’d expect it to be totally flawless at the point of offering it out to review, even when it’s not on sale to the general public yet, but there have been issues.

Now, Samsung is delaying the official launch and on-sale date to iron out issues that have become apparent in the review stage, which is less than ideal and has – of course – led to some unwanted media attention about these revealed faults.

The issues are rather predictably with the dual, folding display – the phone’s most iconic feature and the reason for its sky-high price tag. Samsung already released a video showing the device being subject to tests in a tab, where it was folded and unfolded 200,000 times without causing any problems, but some people have experienced glitches with the screen after little use.

A delay with a device launch as prestigious as the Galaxy Fold has been made out to be is less than ideal and will no doubt impact the success of the launch; with people likely to be wary of spending that much money on a handset they could invariable have problems with themselves (even after further testing).

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