Good and Bad PR: Freshpet scores a World Cup winner

Good PR

Freshpet

I’m really liking some of the stuff I’m seeing from Freshpet at the moment. Last month, news was circulating of the petfood brand’s new video, in which kids and adults from the UK were seen being tricked into eating pet food. It’s not as gross as you think though, because the whole idea behind Freshpet’s products is that they’re made with fresh, human-friendly ingredients (although, FYI, no one is suggesting you should dish it up for your own dinner).

 

The video was a cool idea, accompanied by news that there was going to be a pop-up dining experience in London on 21 June, where dogs and their owners could eat together. All the human dishes would contain some Freshpet food as an ingredient and people had to sign a waiver before taking part (make of that what you will).

Coverage was of course generated and it did a nice job of introducing the American brand to the UK market and ramping up the brand awareness over here for the launch in this territory

This week, Freshpet decided to piggyback on the biggest thing in the news right now… the World Cup 2018. During the England v Colombia match, as the two teams battled it out for a place in the quarter finals, Freshpet had a 90-minute stream of puppies playing the most adorable football match ever on its Facebook page; all to help people to cope with the stress-inducing match and have a temporary distraction from the intensity of it all.

At the time of writing, the video of English bulldogs and Maltese Bichon pups had more than 3.5K views and some decent coverage starting to crop up on the likes of the Metro and further afield. Freshpet worked with Dr. Jeff Foster to create tips on keeping calm during stressful football matches (puppy distraction being one of them) after research found that pictures of totes adorbs baby animals can lower stress levels and improve mental wellbeing. All in all, really clever campaign that I’m sure will get recognised more over the coming days.

My heart rate was through the roof during the penalties on Tuesday night, but unfortunately I was too engrossed in the match/busy hiding behind a cushion to remember that some puppy stress relief could’ve been mine at the click of a mouse. 

Lidl

In other news, I spotted something quite clever from budget supermarket chain Lidl this week (well, I’m assuming it was Lidl who was behind it). You may have seen a story doing the rounds about an NHS nurse who quit her job and made the switch to work for Lidl, for less stress and a wage that made her slightly better off.

This is great recruitment PR for the brand, as it highlighted all of the benefits of working for Lidl and how more and more people are seeing the opportunities there as viable career moves. The story was first reported by The London Economic, but has been picked up by national titles and nursing press too. The lady in question wished to remain anonymous, so there’s every chance this could’ve been a cleverly execute PR story, but whatever the case, it’s a good one.

Bad PR

Samsung
Samsung has been having a few technical issues this week which sound a bit worrying for users. Apparently, a bug with its default texting app has meant that some users have experienced photos from their devices being randomly sent to just-as-random contacts in their phone via SMS.

This was all coming to light on Reddit and some official Samsung forums, where users of models such as the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 8 shared their experiences. One person even wrote on Reddit that they apparently experienced their entire photo gallery being sent to a contact instead of just one picture in the middle of the night.

Imagine that? Imagine waking up and realising that your entire photo gallery and all your awkward selfies, a million pictures of your cat and – worse – some of the slightly more risqué images some people choose to have on their phones, had been sent to let’s say your boss, your mum or your Uncle Gary twice removed. Awkward.

The worst part is that the bug apparently means that no evidence of the sending of these images is even left behind, so you wouldn’t even know or realise! Savage.

This is a bit of a PR nightmare for Samsung and raises major questions about how trustworthy the tech giant is. The coverage of this glitch is everywhere, from Sky News and Forbes to TechCrunch, The Guardian and beyond.

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