Good and Bad PR: It’s just not cricket! Australia upsets British fans, but cheers to NHS, Meta and OnlyFans

Here we are again, returning to the crazy world of Good and Bad PR. Quite a lot to look at this week so let’s just dive straight in.

Good PR

OnlyFans

Let’s start with a bang, so to speak, and give a big well done to OnlyFans. They win this week’s first Good PR for successfully upsetting enough people, with an entirely safe billboard, that it became a national media story.

An OnlyFans “model” hired a few billboards in the UK and USA. Simple. Before you could even say “you have clearly copied Mark Rofe”, the muggles were lining up to be outraged at the passing BBC vox pops crew. The OnlyFans model declared them no riskier than other ads for say, lingerie, but that didn’t stop the convenient graffitiing of the offending billboard.

Harmless really, but a great mainstream dollop of coverage for the “chick a bow wow” business.

Bad PR

Australian cricket team

Sticking with getting shafted and the Oz cricket team went back to their "same old Aussies, always cheating" ways during the second Ashes test. They got one of our plucky England cricketers out in a rather sneaky way. It was all just about above board and they cricket law wise they did nothing wrong, but most England cricket watchers reckoned it was against the spirit of the game.

The result was that it triggered two sets of Bad PR being handed out. The Oz cricket team won’t care if they receive one or not, so let’s just move on to the second recipient in this debacle.

British cricket fans

The old people who sit in the stuffy looking rooms at Lords cricket ground absolutely lost their marbles over the wickedness of the Oz tactics. A few confronted the players as they were going in for their crust-less sarnies and it all got a bit heated.

Words were exchanged, no blows were given or received. Still, it was all a bit much for the cricket bigwigs and now a few of the blazer-wearing old boys have had their memberships suspended. Golly gosh, no jelly and ice cream for Bunty who runs the hedge fund when he gets home.

Good PR

NHS

The NHS gets another Good PR from me this week for rightly getting all the plaudits that it deserves for reaching the ripe old age of 75. The much maligned and kicked about political football has had a torrid time of late thanks largely to the strike action and the minor fact that we are all living longer and costing the state more.

It was nice to see celebrations break out for reaching 75, and the events that went on in hospitals across the UK. All the events were staffed and organised by volunteers as the NHS has no spare cash. Hopefully, the politicians noted the outpouring of love and will try and do more to help the beleaguered life savers!

Meta

I suppose I had better mention Meta and the launch of its Twitter rival, Threads. At the time of writing it had not officially been released, but some over-zealous web dev in the Apple App Store uploaded a few sneaky screengrab previews earlier in the week and the tech media went into over drive.

Will it overtake Twitter? I am not so sure. We are addicted to the cesspit of grime that it spits out every day and I cannot see that changing. Will it launch to much fanfare and high download numbers? 100%, but let’s see where it is at in a year’s time.

Many new social platforms have launched to huge fanfare of late such as Clubhouse and Lemon8, but they have then slowly dropped back again. All we do know is the Drew from Battenhall will be the first to announce that he is employing a “Threads” specialist within minutes of its launch. The world waits on and we give Meta Good PR for the pre-launch hype alone.

Gregor and Coronation Street

One of the reasons why Twitter will never die is because of the occasional viral sensation that comes along. Step forward this week’s hero, @GregorSwanson. Oh, and thanks to Robyn Munro for sharing this with me.

Gregor noticed that the cost-of-living crisis was not just affecting us mere muggles. Celebrity packed soap shows were also feeling the pinch.

In his screen grab of Roy Croppers Café in Coronation Street, he noted that in three months, the cost of pie, chips and mushy peas had risen by a staggering 112%! From a relatively reasonable £2.60 to a massive £5.50 in just 12 weeks. “‘Ecky thump” as the people of The North would say!

Let’s hope the Golden Arch brigade don’t clock on or we could be seeing our nuggs and burgers rise dramatically in price. Great PR for Gregor and Coronation Street.

Got it right or wrong? You know where I am @10Yetis on The Twitter… yet to decide if I will be on the Threads.

Written by Andy Barr, owner of 10 Yetis Digital. Seen any good or bad PR lately? Abuse and contradictory points welcomed over on The Twitter @10Yetis or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email