Good PR

Department for Education

A new scheme being rolled out across all schools in England will see girls being offered free sanitary products, in a new initiative that puts the country in line with its counterparts in Scotland and Wales.

The Department for Education, alongside its partners in the initiative PHS, will aim to ensure that the issue of ‘period poverty’ doesn’t ever pose a barrier between students and their access to education. Millions of tampons, sanitary towels and menstrual cups will now be available for primary and secondary schools to order as they see fit. The government will be allocating each English school a set amount of money to spend on products, calculated on the basis that 35% of pupils that have periods might require them.

With media reports in recent years highlighting how some young females have been skipping school due to a lack of access to sanitary products, this scheme will allow those potentially missing a large proportion of lessons to get back into full-time education and make the most of the opportunities that school can offer them.

Pret a Manger

We might be creeping towards the tail-end of January (I mean, seriously, how long has this month been?) but that doesn’t mean that brands hoping to make the most of Veganuary audiences aren’t still delighting us with their plant-based offerings. Case in point? Pret a Manger.

Every Londoner’s favourite place to grab a soup and sandwich has introduced 12 new vegan options to its menu in its Veggie Pret outlets across the cities of London and Manchester. The items include two types of Poke Bowls, Smoothie Bowls and Buddha Bowls. According to the company big wigs, the new ‘Veggie Pret’ menu aimed to put a focus on creating exciting new dishes, implementing a new range of vegetables and fruits without the need for mock meat or fish, as is so commonly seen when popular chains try to entice those following a plant-based diet.

There are already seven Veggie Prets in the UK, and with a further three set to open in the coming months, it will be interesting to see how these new additions are favoured by loyal customers of the brand.

Bad PR

Liz Earle

Beauty brand Liz Earle has been forced to pay an ex-employee more than £17,000 after a tribunal found the company to have discriminated against Helen Larkin, who was given two weeks’ notice of her redundancy whilst on maternity leave in June 2018.

The new mum, who’d worked at the company for five years before being let go from her position, claimed the company had rejected her applications for two other digital marketing positions within the business due to her impending maternity.

Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Larkin said that she took the case to a tribunal, refusing behind-the-scenes offers of pay-outs, in order to ‘empower women to speak up’, and that the experience had cast a huge shadow over what should have been a really special time for her and her new daughter.

Sonos

The consumer electronics company, famed for offering the ultimate range of wireless speakers and home sound systems, is facing a whole heap of backlash this week after announcing it will stop providing software updates for its oldest products later this year.

That’s right, customers with devices manufactured between 2011 and 2015 – regardless of whether they still work or not – will be unable to receive any new features rolled out by Sonos.

According to spokespeople for the company, without the new software updates, access to services and overall functionality of sound systems will eventually be disrupted. Customers with outdated products have the choice of either keeping them after support ends, or replacing them with a modern Sonos product with a discount (although it has conveniently kept quiet about exactly how much of a discount it would offer).

Love Island

If someone had put a gun to my head at Christmas, I would’ve put money on the fact I’d be discussing the new Winter series of Love Island by the end of the month.

And so here we are…

Whilst the inaugural Winter edition of Love Island might be receiving some mediocre and lukewarm reviews from the critics, it’s still very much receiving its fair share of media coverage, albeit for some extremely controversial circumstances.

It was revealed on Tuesday that despite being on air for just TEN DAYS, the series has already racked up more than 700 complaints from members of the public taking their issues with the Itv2 show to Ofcom.

By far the largest number of complaints have resulted from contestant Ollie Williams, described in the press as a ‘trophy hunter’. Images of the landowner posing for photographs next to dead animals in Africa caused a huge amount of fury from viewers of the show, clearly angry that producers had let him participate in the show.

Written by Lauren Wilden, head of PR at 10 Yetis Digital. Seen any good or bad PR lately? You know what to do @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email