I’m back, after a week of Halloween and Bonfire Night shenanigans. Fortunately it was fairly quiet seven days in the media, apart from the loss of a minor Royal and the usual low-key goings on of the government tax-increase PR machine. Let’s take a gander through the good and bad PR hits of the week.

It Asda be the best employer

Waitrose had a car crash of a few weeks in comms land. The story broke about Tom Boyd, an autistic man who volunteered to work at Waitrose for four years, but was let go when his mother asked if he could take on a paid role.

According to BBC, Boyd’s mother asked if he could be given “a few paid hours” but was allegedly told his work experience would come to an end. I don’t think anyone in comms land could believe the posh supermarket would do this.

As soon as the story hit the headlines the PR race was on for a rival supermarket to offer the person a role. Asda won that race, and it was delivered during a live interview by Andy Burnham. Bad PR for Waitrose, great PR for Asda.

Ready10 should be McHappy with its campaign

Ready10 is on fire with its McDonalds Happy Meal campaigns. After last year’s success of removing the smiles from the boxes for a limited period, it has hit another one out of the park.

The usually red boxes had the colour removed and are now completely blank. Kids and young adults are being encouraged to draw how they feel, to help families talk more about their emotions. The campaign is a partnership between McDonalds and BBC Children in Need.

The resulting media coverage is nothing short of fantastic and if it doesn’t win an award, I will eat my (new) PR Andy Barr vox-pops microphone windshield (get me). Kudos to Ready10 and McDonalds for coming up with such a fantastic campaign. A well-deserved good PR gong from me.

EE by gum the service is bad

EE, a brand that is in my opinion one of the most aggressive advertisers in the UK, had a bad week. Ofcom named it as Britain’s most complained-about broadband, landline and pay-TV provider between April and June 2025.

The media lapped the story up and it went everywhere. This will hurt the brand at a time when acquiring new customers is getting more costly, and will leave a horrid trail of negativity around its online brand terms.

EE’s comms defence was very ballsy. Its statement alluded to the rise in complaints being because of “more customers than ever joining” the brand. Nice shift in focus and I salute its attempt to deflect the issue.

It didn’t work for me though; it’s a bad PR gong for the tech giant.

This isn’t just a profit loss, it is a M&S profit loss

This columnist has previously praised the CEO of M&S, Stuart Manchin for his handling of both the good and bad of the last 12 months. Despite the announcement of a profit wipe-out at the brand, I am still going to salute his work.

He had a very tough set of messages to get out this week, but delivered all the bad news in a hugely positive way. He is now, in my mind, up there with Nick Varney of Merlin Entertainment for being one of the best corporate communicators currently on the market.

I am more than aware there is a very slick comms machine behind him and that is why I dedicate his good PR gong to the entire M&S PR team.

Sticking up for traditional media

It is a little-known fact that I started life as a political analyst and lobbyist. I quickly turned to the world of PR for a far more enjoyable career. One political story of sorts, did catch my eye and so here I am, sticking up for the press pack who work on government stories.

Steph Spyro, deputy political editor at the Daily Express, wrote a LinkedIn piece this week about Rachel Reeves inviting content-creators and social media influencers into her pre-budget presser that happened on Tuesday. To be clear, Steph was writing it from a positive point of view. I am, however, not having any of that.

I am all for dedicated influencer and content-creator briefings by government departments, something that has happened for a while. For high-level press conferences though, I firmly believe that we need trained journalists asking probing questions and offering a level of scrutiny that the country needs.

This latest political move feels very Trump-esque. I was not sure if I was barking up the wrong tree so I posted about it on LinkedIn to get feedback and also spoke to a very senior national journalist to get their opinion.

They said:

“Despite what many think, professional journalists in this country are trained and qualified to make sure their reporting is fair, accurate and contemporaneous. For a key institution like the British government to dismiss the hard-earned credentials of the national press, by demoting journos’ press conference positions in lieu of untrained and unaccountable online political influencers, is a terrifying step backwards for society.”

At the risk of sounding like a miserable old man, content-creators can do one. Let’s leave it to the trained media to ask the tough questions and let the influencers continue to have their own, dedicated, political events.

Bad PR for whoever decided to let content creators sit front row at Rachel Reeves pre-tax-rise press briefing.

Got it right or wrong, you know where to find me. Thanks as ever to Alan S Morrison for the story ideas.