Good and Bad PR: JLR on the backfoot, Asda’s meal deal and Open AI reveals rich data

As the news agenda heats up heading towards the last quarter of 2025, the meaty stories are landing thick and fast.

This week’s Good and bad PR revisits a few previous campaigns whilst also highlighting a few new hits and misses.

Jaguar Land Rover finally runs out of positive comms fuel

How quickly the tide turns. JLR received praise from this columnist for normalising the cyber-incident story it was embroiled in. Fast forward a week, and things have changed for the comms team.

The BBC broke news that it was, according to trade union Unite, telling its affected workers to apply for Universal Credit. JLR’s comms team did not respond fast enough to the request for comment, and hey presto, the company lost control of the narrative and is now on the back foot.

Meanwhile, a few miles down the road, Wedgewood, of spenny-crockery fame, has announced a pause in production whilst stock levels catch up with demand. Which is PR speak for, “sales are lower than expected”.

Unlike JLR, a spokesperson from Wedgewood employees’ GMB Union said workers would receive “full pay” throughout the pause.

Maybe JLR could do a PR job swap for a few weeks? Bad PR for JLR

Asda continues to bounce back with positive media

When I last put the boot into Asda for its shonky comms, I reiterated that for all of its marketing rhetoric and bluster. The only way it was going to win the muggles back was by lowering prices. In what I chose to believe is another example of a big brand reading this very column, it has, and it is winning the media over.

Asda has announced that it is launching the lowest priced standard meal-deal, i.e. the price is the same even without the use of a loyalty card. This gave the national media a chance to create the comparison and table-graphic stories that it loves.

It works out at around 10p cheaper than a Tesco meal-deal, although to get the cheapest Tesco offer, you must use its Clubcard. As a side note, when all brands were compared in a handy media table, Waitrose came out at a whopping £5 for its lunch equivalent. Wow.

Great PR for Asda. This puts it in a great position as we head into the retailer's favourite shopping period, Christmas.

See it, Say it, Sorted: Labour tests out its first distraction campaign

Could this be the first sign of a switch in Labour comms strategy? It appears to have launched its first ever distraction media campaign.

The back story, in my opinion, is that the UK is the closest that I can remember to experiencing significant civil unrest. The protests last weekend, the seemingly unwanted visit of Trump and, once again, the dabbling of Elon Musk in British society, stirring up hatred. It’s been a bleak week for the UK.

Labour needed to move the focus and give people something safer to moan about.

Step forward the age-old-saviour; rail announcements. The Conservative, former transport secretary, did something similar in 2022 when he vowed a crackdown on the overuse of train announcements. No one really knew why, other than it provided a welcome distraction for the ruling Conservative Party.

Labour is now having a go. It has announced the re-branded “See it, Say it, Sorted” campaign. In reality, all it has done is make the number bigger and kept the same slogan. This is not news, yet it was put out on the government’s news channels, and pushed as a big deal to the media.

Not one muggle cares about this. A pointless win for the Labour comms machine.

Rich people love AI

OpenAI of ChatGPT fame did a nice story this week that landed really well, although it did remind me of the YouPorn trends story, which also does well every year.

The AI overlord opened parts of its database to reveal who most uses the platform and what they have been doing. Turns out, early adopters of AI were males who have a few bob. Moving on to this year and the split between male and female users is fairly balanced.

What is interesting is that use of AI is far higher in affluent neighbourhoods. I don’t really know why this would be, but I am sure an academic will reveal a theory soon.

Also, reinforcing, kind of, what that horrible AI for PR bunch have been going on about since they realised they could charge for it, muggles are mostly using AI for research and looking for information.

Imagine the frustration at being an Open AI engineer and building a machine of such great power and potential, only for rich people to be using it to bake better cakes and improve their golf swing. Sigh. A fantastic slice of good PR for OpenAI though.

Team science gets flummoxed 

Horseshoe crabs had a reprieve this week. It turns out that their blood is so rare, that over a million of them a year are scooped up by team science, to use their blood in tests.

Of that one million, approximately 300,000 die after the blood harvesting, so US pharma regulators decided to approve the creation of a synthetic version of the blood for use in tests.

A moratorium was placed on the blood-milking. But, another team of scientists said it was too unsafe for nature, and could cause damage if released into the ecosystem.  Anyway, this is all now being debated at the World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi, and I will personally be praying for the crabs. Bad PR for team science.

Got it right or wrong, you know where I am and… as always, thanks to Alan S Morrison for his excellent story spotting.