Good PR

KFC has received a bucketload of coverage (see what I did there?) for something that I have to say is quite unexpected. After teaming up with World View, a spaceflight company, the fast-food chain has announced that it will be sending a Zinger chicken sandwich into space.

I know what you’re thinking; why? Well, to be honest with you, I still don’t really know. I’d guess because it’s a pretty immense PR opportunity. The story goes that the Zinger will embark on a four-day flight in the stratosphere (up to 30 miles above Earth) to help advance space research.

The Zinger blast off will take place on 21 June and broadcast live online (of course); returning to Earth after its flight in its recognisable bucket-shaped container. Whilst its up there, the Zinger will help to show off World View’s Stratollite technology; a system that has been designed to bring small cargos into the stratosphere for months at a time to deliver Earth-imaging, disaster relief and internet at the fraction of the cost of a normal rocket-launch. A large balloon takes the Stratollite to the required height and it rides the wind to steer once it’s up there.

The Zinger flight, however ridiculous it might seem, will actually be a chance for World View to test a lot of technology that it needs to get shipshape for future flights; like solar power systems and HD video links.

News of the upcoming Zinger space flight has made it onto Mashable, New York Times, TIME, Forbes, loads of spacey sights and many other titles.

Watch the video about it all here…

Bad PR

I’m based in sunny Gloucestershire and one of our local colleges has had a bit of a nightmare of late after some of its student’s antics went public. Hartpury College, which specialises in sports and agricultural further education, was forced to suspend students after footage emerged that was shared on Snapchat of them “butchering” a fox cub.

The cub had apparently been hit by a vehicle and one student, who was training to be a gamekeeper, killed it with a knife to prevent it from suffering. If that were the case, then why share it on social media? Also, the caption “Got the fu*ker” that the female student shared the video clip with seems pretty damning. Something doesn’t smell right to me.

In a separate incident, a second-year student was expelled after a photograph of him smugly holding up a dead cat by its paw emerged online. Apparently, the cat belonged to two employees who lived on-campus. They posted online that it was found dead in a hedge, thinking it had been hit by a car.

Some students have come out and said that this seems to be part of an initiation at the college; a competition in which people see who can kill the biggest animal. Badgers have been slaughtered as part of this.

It’s all very sick and certainly makes for hard reading. The college has had to issue statements about the happenings and has received negative coverage on the likes of the BBC, ITV, Metro, Telegraph, Express and other national media outlets.

Written by Shannon Peerless, 10 Yetis @ShazzaYeti on Twitter
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