Good and Bad PR: Joe Wicks’ killer bar, a Conservative typo and Press Gazette tackles Olivia Brown

What a fantastic week it has been in PR land. On the positive side there was a big announcement by the founders of Taylor Herring and the industry united, quite rightly, with praise. Over on the murky digital side of the industry, there was quite a controversial outing of an AI PR tool that I will come on to later.

The world takes aim at Joe Wicks

To be completely honest, if a very British queue was being formed to throw rotten (but healthy) fruit at Joe Wicks, I would be at the front. I have zero time for him after the pain that was my kids and his Covid daily work out. It caused nothing but bickering in our household and was quickly dispatched.

That being said, I feel he is getting undue criticism for his latest foray into the media spotlight, creating a fake, “killer” protein bar to highlight the dangers of processed foods. My opinion and suspicion, having worked in this industry for a global FMCG, is that some of the larger food conglomerates are pointing their lobbying and influence canons in his direction, and this is why the media reaction to his experiment has been so negative.

The UK is knee deep in a financial crisis, and can’t afford to keep feeding the NHS slot machine. The medical services are, quite literally, weighed down by an obesity crisis and anything that stops people from picking up an ultra-processed meal, and instead go for something marginally healthier, must be a good thing.

On this occasion, I stand by Joe Wicks, although not too close to him, I don’t want people to think we are friends. Good PR for Joe.

An apple a day kicks your liver away

Everyone loved the long and hot summer, apart from the farmers, and we are now starting to understand why. Crops have either been killed by the heatwaves or flourished, but maybe a bit too much.

Cider fans are certainly feeling the impact as the heat helped to create bumper crops of apples. Sadly though, that also means the alcohol levels are through the roof, making it harder for it to be the mainstream drink of choice for the South West of the UK.

Cider making brands are reporting the apples are just too high in alcohol, and it is reducing the quantity that can be made. For the smaller brewers there is an added tax impact. Cider under 8.5%ABV qualifies for small producer relief and anything stronger gets whacked with higher tax. One brewer complained the heat has taken his small batch brewing from 8.5% to 10.5%.

One solution is to water the product down, but this puts the Wurzels in a right old tizz, so it instead is being sold as an alternative to having wine at dinner. Ooh argh, ooh argh. Bad PR for the heatwave.

Conference points to the end for the Tories

The Conservative Party Conference felt like it was the last hoorah of a once bustling political party. The BBC reported that attendance was poor and the only thing that I suspect could have woken the place up was Nigel parachuting in to announce a merger and to save the Tory day. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the conference hit all the headlines because a Conservative staffer forgot to proof the bespoke branded chocolate bar wrappers and they misspelled “Britain”. This mistake got far more headlines than the conference itself and it about sums up where the Conservatives are as a party right now. Bad PR for the proofer.

The rule of three is doing for Labour

Instead of delighting in the Conservative party marketing blunder, Labour found itself on the back foot after a collective triumvirate of negative UK economic headlines took its popularity even lower.

First, the IoD announced that UK business confidence had fallen to an all-time low thanks to increasing employment costs. It called on the Chancellor to deliver a November budget that put business at its heart. I think we all know that Labour is incapable of doing this.

Second, a left-leaning thinktank, The Resolution Foundation, released a report it had commissioned into understanding wealth distribution in the UK. It found that the wealth gap is growing and declared that it is “practically impossible” for a typical worker to save enough money to go on to be classed as rich.

The third area is slightly more pessimistic. Gold prices are at an all-time high and this has historically been a strong indicator for economic disasters being on the global horizon. Labour can’t really say much about gold prices after Gordon Brown sold the large majority of the UK gold at an all-time low price.

More worryingly, many global analysts are saying that this could well be another indicator of potential civil unrest, something that this very commentor, dear reader, has been saying is close in the UK for over a year now.

Did the Labour comms machine fire into action to address any of these three areas? I think it is best described as “no comment”. Nothing of note is landing for the Labour PR machine and its future, like the UK economy, looks dire.

Automated PR tools get the Press Gazette treatment

Press Gazette went after one of the automated PR tools that scour the #journorequest marketplace and fire off AI crafted quotes and stories back to a journo.

According to Press Gazette reporting, the AI search tool called Olivia Brown, which starts a story and looks for publishers to cover it, is “seriously undermining the credibility of UK publishers”.

All I would say is that this is not the first. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) has spawned hundreds of these kinds of AI bot businesses over the years. I have been offered early access to most of them.

The agency in question has 100% taken the operation to a new high, and while the public bashing may have been somewhat deserved, I feel sorry for the staff who work there and now must deal with this.

I have used tools like this, mainly around comment opportunity identification and, quite frankly, if you don’t use something like this then you risk being left behind in the rush that is the reactive commentary industry.

But there’s a risk that it could be taken one step further, as AI could create an entire press release with fake commentary. That’s too far. 

I do always take umbrage when the great and good of the industry, many of whom have not done a day at the actual coal face of day-to-day PR account exec duties for decades, take aim at things they don’t really understand.

Great PR for Press Gazette for the sheer volume of work it put into this and outing some serious abuse of the technology.

Got it right or wrong, I am not really bothered but do tell me anyway. Massive thanks to Alan S Morisson for the story.