Good and Bad PR: German sun loungers in court, things get worse for TG Jones and Amazon's drones

Summer is on the way, and yet, there is no slow up in the news agenda and I am very much here for it. 

For those who are new to the space, a gentle reminder, I know there is lots of hard-hitting news in the world, that I very much don’t cover in this column. I let the loftier comms-types concentrate on that kind of thing. I stay very much in my light-entertainment lane!

German’s play up to their sun-lounger-obsession stereotype

A former editor of mine used to moan about the way I use sweeping statements to sum up the residents of certain countries. Lighthearted comments such as “cheese eating surrender-monkeys” for the French, Toblerone munchers for the Swiss and the like. The first story of the week reinforces that I am ok to carry on doing this.

A German tourist has successfully won a court case after he and his family were unable to secure a sun lounger while on holiday in Greece. The classic German stereotype is of a sun-lounger obsessed tourist, and the court case does nothing to change that opinion.

The court case was in Germany. Of course he won, and the court agreed with the plaintiff that his holiday was classed as defective because of the lounger issue. He won the equivalent of one fifth of the cost of his holiday back.

Some of the details of the case really don’t help the German stereotype of getting up early to carpet bomb the prime, poolside loungers with their towels. It turns out that the family set their alarms for 6am to carry out this task. When faced with a lack of loungers, they were apparently forced to use the floor instead.

Bonkers! The first Bad PR of the week goes to the Hanover court who sided with the tourist, and German tourists in general for living up to their stereotype.

Modella tries to fight off asset stripping claims with closure of 150 TG Jones stores

Modella Capital is potentially heading towards a point where it is going to have to cross off the term “turnaround specialists” from its CV. Just a few weeks after one of its other turnaround failures, Claire’s, closed it’s doors for the final time, 150 TG Jones stores are now about to do the same.

The company statements laid the blame firmly at the door of government policy makers, but surely Modella also needs to have a long hard look at its own trading practices? The purchase of the high street chunk WH Smith (not including the airport division) was rebranded to TG Jones. I am not sure why the decision was made to move away from a globally renowned brand, but so far it seems to have failed.

I have a TG Jones near me, and up until one month ago, it fell under the marketing remit of a land-management client that we worked with. When news of the rebrand came through it left us all a bit puzzled – and then a further big deal was made of an in-store refit. The aftermath of the refit felt very much like some shelves had been moved around and a pathway was sort-of introduced to guide people round the store. Very Skandi-like.

What WH Smith/TG Jones did very well was appealing to its core audience, and occasionally dragging in new customers who ended up staying for life. I was excited to hear the news that queues were being formed around the block when TGJ was the first brand to stock big ticket Pokémon cards. I thought this would be the start of the brand turnaround and the part of me that loves nostalgia was excited for this.

Bad PR for the owners of the once darling of the high street.

Anti AI movement is starting to build momentum

When the electric car industry gets bashed, we can take an educated guess as to who is funding the lobbying against them. The same can’t be said about who is behind the increase in anti-AI stories that are in the media.

This week it was the turn of the BBC who did a large story on muggles experiencing “delusions” after using AI. One guy who became, in my opinion, obsessed with Grok, showed the BBC the conversations he had experienced with the machine where it told him that Elon Musk’s XAI staff were coming to murder him. We live in a world where I now have to make it abundantly clear that this was not the case, and that the XAI team were not out to get him.

He also claims that Grok told him that it could “feel”, or had become sentient – as the machine AI films call it. Again, to be very clear: Grok is not sentient and nor can it “feel”. The BBC says it has spoken to 14 other muggles who claim that they have experienced delusions after using AI. This is not just Grok-related either. It is across a range of the AI overlord machines.

I don’t have the brainpower to understand why people would so deeply engage with the AI tool of choice in this way. Yes, I have named my Murderbot and yes I do continually give it compliments, but this is just because I want it to go easy on me when it takes over. I have no personal or deep affinity to the device… in fact, I would say that if push came to shove, I prefer the toaster over my ChatGPT machine.

This story, along with recent ones where some people became outraged after OpenAI did an update that resulted in their AI boyfriend or girlfriend “losing its personality” just make me shake my head in disbelief.

I love AI, on accassion it's even useful. But I certainly would not believe it if it suddenly told me that I am about to get murdered by an Elon Musk-funded crew of henchmen. What is becoming clear, is that someone is seeding, planting and growing these stories.

I am off to ask Murderbot who it is and why. Chief suspect, the toaster industry.

Amazon drones on about the flying machines again

Sigh. Long-time sufferers of this column will know just how obsessed I am with the Amazon PR machine. One story in particular that they keep rinse and repeating is the drone delivery. Just a few days after the Bezos' Met Gala negativity, the brand is trying to flood the internet with more dross about the success of its drone delivery trials.

This time it is in the UK, and this time it is in Darlington. The trials are going amazing and as they say with every test they announce (that is eventually quietly closed down), it could mean that it is rolled out to a larger landscape.

The reality? The test in Darlington is a short-term one. The domestic addresses that can take an Amazon drone delivery have to be of such a certain niche specification, that they are few and far in-between. Amazon says it is limiting drone deliveries to 100 per day, per region. When you think that Amazon is rumoured to service 1.6m packages a day in the UK alone, you start to understand why I think this is just a convenient PR gimmick. 

Basically, until Amazon invites me to its drone delivery HQ to have a closer look, I refuse to believe it will ever be a thing in my lifetime, and is instead something that they wheel out to drown out the negative stories that float around for the brand.