Good and Bad PR: Labour catches The Sun, Lidl gets cheap and Aalborg zoo releases pet plea

Are we all back and refreshed from our summer sojourn? Fear not, I remained behind, keeping an eye on the media hits and misses to bring you up to speed.

There is a fair old chunk to get through in today’s round up of Good and Bad PR, so some of the stories may be just a flying visit.

Labour has a chance to get out of the media doldrums

Labour HQ is clearly another high-profile bunch who are reading this column. I said some time ago that it needed to get someone from outside the crazy world of political PR to come in and get more positive stories to land. This was clearly taken on board, as Labour hired the former editor of The Sun, David Dinsmore to head up the Government Communications Service. A win for all of us.

Before he could get his feet under the table, he was having to deal with the Homelessness Minister, Rushanara Ali, trotting out the usual resignation line about distractions and stepping down. Dinsmore has a massive job on his hands.

Labour has achieved several wins since it came to power. In my opinion, a mixture of poor timing, poor story scheduling and a lack of a media heavy hitter have meant very few have landed. Could this now change with Dinsmore on board, I suspect so.

Good PR for the appointment, Bad PR for Rushanara who once again proved that MP’s often fail to do the right thing when they think they can get away with it.

Grok is up for the chop after biting its master

A few of you sent me this very funny exchange over on the TwitteringX between Musk, his pet AI Grok, and Open AI’s Sam Altman.

Altman accused Musk of toying with the X algo to give his own post more prominence. Musk denied it. A muggle asked Grok who was right and shock horror, Grok sided with Altman.

Hilarity ensued in the comments, and I suspect Grok may soon be decommissioned.

Danish zoo wants your pet

Now, as someone with a pathological fear of dogs you would think I would be celebrating this next story, but it is 100% bad PR, even for me.

The zoo put out a plea for pet owners who have reached the end of their tether with their pets to drop them off for euthanising and then feeding to the carnivores of the bitey big-cat variety. I get why this is necessary in a time of supply costs rising and understand that this was seen as a credible option in a zoo-management meeting, but the plea should never have made it into the wild.

The world gasped. As many pointed out, it was using the word “pet” in the appeal statement that put the cat amongst the pigeons (or annoying puppies amongst the European Lynx, as is the case here).

At best, it’s good PR from a global awareness front, bad PR for the zoo comms team and terrible PR for the pets thinking they are on a day trip to a zoo.

Get your armpit out for the fads

Marketing fads come and go but I can never remember one to do with armpits. I have noted that of late there seems to be a race by the beauty and pharma companies to try and talk about the most bizarre body parts under the guise of “de-stigmatising” them. Hence the rise on social media of bum-hole ointments, toe spacers for those with hobbit-feet and, checks notes, the search for an armpit ambassador by Dove.

This all relates to its sponsorship of the American Open tennis tournament. Fans must submit a video saying why they should be the armpit ambassador and they stand a chance of getting a $10k sponsorship deal, a VIP trip to The Open and heavy promotion on the company’s TikTok page.

I class this as harmless fun PR. It serves a purpose and if someone at Unilever thinks that there needs to be more conversations about armpits, then who am I to question that. If anyone ever asks me about examples of media stories doing better than maybe they should in the silly-season, I need to remember this one.

Good PR for Dove and its marketing team.

South Yorkshire bins rubbish signal

Bin lorries and the operators are our nations humble secret weapon. Inventors and scientists from the UK can land a robot on Mars or invent the technology behind cloning your cat, but we still can’t get good phone signal in parts of Yorkshire. Step forward the South Yorkshire bin lorry massive.

Its wagons have been fitted with technology that maps mobile phone signal dead-patches so that the region can identify and rectify that issue. The Mayor of South Yorkshire called the “not-spots” which I love, and the data will be made available to the general public so they can find the best phone network to suit their needs.

Not all heroes wear capes and South Yorkshire bin crew are great evidence of this. Good PR for them.

Lidl kicks Aldi off the top spot for the cheapest supermarket

After a 20 month reign as the cheapest supermarket according to affiliate marketing specialists Which? Aldi has fallen to the second spot. Lidl is now number one and this was a massive story for the media over the last week.

I expected Aldi to do something funny on its oft-spoken-about social media account, but it kept very quiet. I am guessing it is feverishly scouring the shelves for price-slashing opportunities in order to reclaim its crown.

What is staggering is the gap between the two discount supermarkets and the rest of the chasing pack. Asda is £11 more expensive for the equivalent basket of goods and Tesco (even with the Clubcard) is £13 more. Best we don’t mention Ocado or Waitrose, although it would argue it didn’t want to play this game anyway.

It caps a fun few weeks for Lidl, after a very odd but fun “silly-season” story also starting doing the rounds on social media that its logo secretly contains an image of a dog playing a piano. I know right, the muggles must have been on the hard stuff the day they discovered that one!

Good PR for Lidl but expect Aldi to come out swinging.

Before we end, notable mentions for Brewdog who had another ad banned by the ASA, It is almost like a hobby for them now, although I did not in the official ASA report that only one person complained about the “offending” ad and I would guess that it was a rival. I was a bit sad at Brewdog not fighting back with more vigour, it is so corporate nowadays. Another notable mention for Reddit who revealed that it is the most cited domain by AI across all of your favourite LLM models. This will no-doubt be written into the pitch deck of those AI PR specialists as soon as this hits the press.

Got it right or wrong? I don’t really care but do let me know. Thanks to Alan S Morrison who has been helping me keep abreast of the media goings on whilst you were all off sunning yourselves.