Here I am again, back with the latest hits and misses from a full on week in public relations. My first PRmoment video version of this very column has now debuted, and the reaction was, as I guessed it would be, very much stunned silence. Accepting a Bafta for services to the media news community will have to wait, the column needs writing.

It has been a funny old week in the news cycle. Trump, political incompetence and war seem to be the norm nowadays. Rotating around in a never-ending circle of woe. Fear not though, I am here to lift the spirits via a column packed with side-eye sneers and fun.

Clarkson lifts the spirits of the farming community

The fourth season of Clarkson’s Farm has landed, and no one can deny it is the PR equivalent of a gatling gun. A recent farming community report listed him as being three times more respected on farming issues than Chris Packham, only outranked by Attenborough. He covers tricky topics that other farming shows can’t or won’t.

He has also used the show as a platform to support the young farmers around him, and this is an admirable move. Dare I suggest that the show has also taught public bodies and local authorities a lesson in comms as well. For example, my local county council is Gloucestershire. They have clearly learned from the mistakes that its friends in West Oxfordshire District Council made in its previous interactions with the Clarkson machine.

When Gloucestershire County Council appeared in the latest season of the show, they were beyond helpful, incredibly positive and those who took part received nothing but praise from the petrol-head himself. Clarkson has done more than lifted the lid on the level of bureaucracy that surrounds farming.

He has created a movement for those who drown in red-tape and highlighted the issues faced by the very people who try to feed our nation. It is just a matter of time before the supermarkets get a more considered and eye-opening poke from the Lord of Diddly Squat farm. Those lovely countryside sounding farm names that many of the supermarkets use in their affordable ranges are not all that they seem, and I suspect they will be the next focus of the Clarkson army.

That’s a battle for another day. Season four is a hit. Great PR for Clarkson and Great PR for Gloucestershire County Council comms team.

Heathrow’s comms team fails to lift us up where PR belongs

I gave Heathrow Airport Good PR for the way in which its comms team handled the electricity outage. As the self-appointed enquiry starts, so too does the lid-lifting on what went on, and the comms team are not looking as glorious.

It was a fast-paced and all engulfing crisis. Having worked in many of these (lengthy power outages in Birmingham city centre during a live world cup football game, employee accused of murder when I was working for a transport company, a toddler death from a product that was sold by the FMCG I was working for at the time, and these are just the in-house situations I can talk about), I know a few things about crisis comms.

In the heat of the moment, it can be hard to not knee-jerk react to what seems like an absurd sounding or flippant media question. Knee-jerk is what eventually gets you though, and you need a calm hand around you to take stock of the bigger picture. I suspect the sheer volume of media enquiries led the team to potentially drown in requests and some replies slipped through the sense-check net.

The fact the CEO of the airport could not be awoken during the early part of the crisis is somewhat understandable. Not acceptable, but understandable. The fact the comms team responded to questions asking about this from credible media outlets by allegedly using phrases like “ill-informed misinformation” shows a breakdown in team communications and a broken crisis comms process.

I can see how it happened, but it doesn’t paint us comms professionals in the best light. Bad PR for Heathrow.

Sea creatures being kept in the dark, but the impact is unknown

Keeping the theme of the last story and being kept in the dark, it turns out the sea is getting darker. The University of Plymouth has sea experts and sea scientists, and it makes sense. It has the sea right next to it and a massive naval HQ.

The scientists have found that sunlight is penetrating the sea waters far less than it used to, making the sea look darker. And, 9% of the global ocean has got darker between 2003 and 2022. To me, it makes sense. I would have blamed the sheer amount of waste being pumped into it, but no, I am wrong. Apparently, it is things like algae volume fluctuations and changing sea temperatures.

The kicker for this story is that none of team science knows what the impact of this will be. Despite this, the global media wrote the story up. Marine conservation specialists have speculated that there will be big ramifications.

The report from Team Plymouth Science had statements like, "our findings represent genuine cause for concern". Like what? They don’t know. Seems a bit half-arsed if you ask me…no one did ask me.

Great PR for the Uni of Plymouth, once again though, Team Science don’t cover themselves in glory. 

Nothing fine about Thames Water right now

Thames Water is used to dark and murky waters. Not just because of its tricky financial position, but also because the sewage spills play a part in making our water darker.

It received a £123m fine from Ofwat for not managing its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively. We are being told that this fine won’t be, ultimately, paid for by its customers but I don’t think one person out there truly believes that. These large, multi-territory and multi operating utility companies are murkier than the Plymouth coast sea in December.

You feel for the people who work at Ofwat. What more can it do? Thames Water and its owners, ultimately, don’t care about these fines. The owners won’t be impacted in any way by them. Ofwat needs greater Government support to really make the water companies sit up and take notice that it can’t go on like this.

When I worked for a privatised former electricity government utility, nothing filled our comms team with more dread than when it was announced that Ofgem gained the power to carry out dawn raids on any of the offices or depots. We would role play for these happening every month, across all our depots.

I am unsure if Ofwat have these powers but for sheer shit-housery reasons alone, I rather hope it does and that they start randomly dawn-raiding the water company HQ’s, depots and directors houses. It may make Thames Water buck its ideas up, it may not. I think it would be nice to see a few headlines like this though, because the fines just aren’t working and they are not affecting the people they should be.

Bad PR for Thames Water and the wider water industry again, not including Ofwat.

Renationalised rail companies triggers nothing new

This week saw the first rail operator company being renationalised. This was one of the ruling Labour governments key election messages that got them in power. Like its house building pre-election pledges, all is not what it seemed.

If I was to ask 20 muggles in the street what the main benefit of having a renationalised rail company would be, 19 of them would say “cheaper fares”. The other one would refuse to talk to me because I was wearing the same shorts as I wore in my PRmoment debut video from last Friday.

Again, having worked in the industry, even I would have thought that the main benefit of having a government overlord instead of a corporate beast is that less money needs to go back to the shareholders and instead it can be used to reduce the cost of travel.

Nope, we were all wrong. The core focus will be on improving services (it is the same people working for the nationalised company as it was the privatised one) and improving the infrastructure. Well, the infrastructure such as the track is owned largely by Network Rail, so that’s a dud message as well.

If you are thinking, “ah yes, but we will now surely get newer trains”, you are wrong. The trains are not owned by the rail operators; they are owned by “rolling stock companies” and they lease them to the rail operators. It took me a while to get my head around it too.

What does nationalisation of the rail network really mean? Keep in mind the government intends to have nearly all of them back in house by 2027. It seems to mean nothing will really change. In 2024 Time Out magazine reported that UK rail fares for on the day travel are the most expensive in Europe and this isn’t going to change any time soon.

Another Labour comms flop as every story led with consumer outrage at the fact that fares would not drop. Would we expect any less from a trade-union led organisation?

Beatboxing nun takes centre stage

The Catholic Church is having a boom PR moment. A new Pope was always going to give them a spike in the digital PR bible of Google Trends. The comms team have followed that up by unleashing a, checks notes, beatboxing nun.

A Brazilian nun (not a typo) made an appearance on a Catholic TV channel over there, alongside another nun and a vicar. It sounds like the start of a joke. After a bit of joyful singing, she clasps the mic in two hands like an elderly Eminem and starts beatboxing. The other nun starts to up her dancing tempo and the vicar joins in as well.

I often say that stories have gone global, but this really has. Who knows, it may have gone to an even higher level than global. Language does not present a barrier with this story. The video tells you everything you need to know. We now await Nuns Got Talent, fronted by Jane McDonald and Aled Jones.

Great PR for nuns as a whole and the Catholic Church.

Thanks to my good buddy Alan S Morrison for the story suggestions as ever. If you have a story you want to share, or a competitor that you want to poke, you know where to find me.