Good and Bad PR: Piotr Szczerek eats his hat, Katie Price tops the charts and Kieran Maguire kicks viagogo

Happy ‘kids going back to school’ week to everyone who is currently celebrating. I waved mine off and fought the urge to have an 8am celebratory Dirty Martini. Instead, I went for a large mug of coffee and headed into the latest video call that could have easily been an email.

The last seven days have also seen a shift back to the more serious news agenda that we endured on the run up to the August break. The same old villains are at it again. Let’s take a look shall we.

Rayner the Pain’er for new Labour comms chief

When I recently mentioned that David Dinsmore had not had a chance to get to grips with the failing comms machine of the Labour party, some of their political-fan-boys got in touch to berate me. Gosh, political PR folks are an odd breed.

Anyway, I once again reiterate that the Labour comms machine is broken, and Angela Rayner is the latest nail in their reputation coffin. She has had a stinker of a summer and surely it is only a matter of time before she gets the dreaded ‘vote of confidence’ from the PM (note, it arrived as I was writing this), that means she has roughly a fortnight to save her political career.

The latest wave of negativity came on the back of her home Stamp Duty shenanigans. I am not too sure on the details of what she stands accused of, but when she referred herself to the investigating body, you have to think the countdown to her removal has begun.

Dinsmore must be questioning his decision to join a party that is in such media disarray. Even their traditional supporting media outlets are starting to buckle.

Bad PR once again for the Labour comms machine.

CEO paves the way for his company to get trolled

Piotr Szczerek, is the Polish chief executive of a paving firm. This week he achieved Coldplay-kiss-cam levels of fame thanks to a dastardly deed. As famous tennis player Kamil Majchrzak tried to give his baseball cap to a child fan, Szczerek snatched it away and took it.

Later on, the player met up with the kid and handed a new cap over. but the internet also took over and taught Szczerek a lesson.

First of all, the CEO fired out a “sorry, not sorry” statement that basically talked up the survival of the fittest mantra that many evil CEOs tend to quote. He quickly withdrew that once the residents of the internet took hold of the story and vowed revenge on behalf of the child.

Overnight his business was swamped with one-star reviews, tanking his business rankings and leaving its reputation in tatters. The hat-snatcher had no option but to issue a follow up apology where he was far more contrite.

The internet is no doubt a horrible place, but on this occasion, I salute it for its action. Good PR for internet sleuths.

A whole new world for Katie Price, she may be popular after all

When my long-suffering editor suggests a story, I immediately sit up and take notice.

I will dare to admit that the Katie Price v Peter Andre media feud has passed me by. Having not got myself up to speed, I feel bad for everyone involved that such a deeply personal set of dirty washing is being aired in public. Think of the kids.

I am not sure who is right or wrong, but what I do love is that the kind internet folks, similar to the previous story, have been up to their usual tricks.

When Peter Andre launched a new song, the Katie Price fans coordinated a mass listen-along to some of her own “music” to the point where Pricey got a number one streaming hit, from a song she recorded 17 years ago.

As regular readers know, I am a massive fan of this kind of shit-housery. Great work by the Katie Price fans and I just hope all the public spats now die-down, I don’t think they will, but an old PR man can hope.

Viagogo given passport to media hell

Viagogo has committed the ultimate sin and wronged the national treasure that is Kieran Maguire, one of the co-podders of the best football/maths crossover podcast in history, The Price of Football.

Maguire used a ticket resale platform to buy tickets to a gig, only for the seller to realise it had sold them for too cheap a price, and withdraw the sale on the day of the performance so it could get a higher price.

I heard Maguire talking about this, admittedly jokingly, on the podcast. Similar hard-hitting media superstars to me must have also tuned in. The Guardian talked of his experiences in an article that outed viagogo for other alleged shady practices.

One ticket buyer was sent the tickets he had purchased on the platform, along with a photocopied image of the passport of the original seller which was needed so they could enter the gig.

I can’t imagine the kinds of GDPR and ID protection rules that this breaches. Viagogo trotted out a bland statement about being committed to the highest standards of blah blah blah but the damage has already been done.

The ticket buying and selling market appears to be unregulated, and this needs to be addressed. It is one thing to scam a normal muggle, but to mess with the national hero that is Kieran Maguire is another matter altogether.

Bad PR for viagogo.

Sad music makes you puke; it’s official

Ah, summer is over and team science has reawakened to reveal more pointless research. This week a team of scientists from China carried out a study into the effects of music on car-sickness recovery. No, really.

Thirty muggles with a propensity for uppy-chucky on long car journeys were driven down windy roads to induce car sickness. Once the vom-fest was triggered. the car was stopped and each muggle was subjected to a different genre of music.

Pop and positive beats were said to make the recovery go far quicker, whereas sad and slow music was reported to prolong nausea. Entirely pointless, but at least the Chinese university behind it all got some positive global headlines.

As a footnote, in the report that I read, the boffins said the sample size was too small, and they needed to expand the tests. Nope. Thanks for the offer though lads.