Good and Bad PR: SEO to blame for Budget, the gift of Greggs and JLR keeps quiet

With the row still rumbling on into last week’s comms shit show that was the budget, it feels as though the usual Christmas marketing calendar has been pushed back. Fear not, though dear reader, I have taken a look through this week’s media headlines to see who has had a good and bad week in PR.

SEO behind OBR leak 

The OBR will have spent a small fortune on the cyber security consultant who was brought in to investigate the leak of the budget before Reeves made her formal announcement. I could have solved this in five minutes for far less money.

It was in no way a leak. Someone at the OBR made the content live, the sneaky media guessed the URL by looking at previous examples and taking an informed guess.

The real villain in this story is, once again, the SEO community and Google.

The search engine loves vanity URL strings, and the people working in your SEO teams (usually the ones with a monitor-tan) are forever banging on at content marketing folk that a nice web address can make the difference in big G’s eyes. So, there we have it. Bad PR for the content marketing/web team at the OBR, whose actions have brought down its head person. Cyber security people, get back in your box.

PS, is now the time to admit to PRmoment owner (and legend in his own front room) Ben Smith, that I was wrong about it being a deliberate leak? Maybe. 

Greggs gives Christmas cheer

Thanks to Greggs, the Gods of beige foods, awkward secret Santa presents are no more.

It has partnered with Moonpig to combine a Christmas card with a voucher a sausage or vegan roll. There is some form of science behind the card that makes it heat-activated to reveal the prize, but I didn’t fully understand that bit, so for the purposes of this column, I've glossed over it.

Greggs and Moonpig teamed up to address the, apparently, very real feeling of anxiety that a large percentage of the muggles have around finding a good secret Santa present. Where some might say the world's gone soft, Greggs spotted a PR opportunity, and the rest is history.

For any of you wanting to buy influence with a not very influential PR thought leader, I should add: if someone sent me a sausage-roll-based secret Santa present, they would immediately be fast-tracked through my rigorous, eight-year-long, best friend selection programme and put in the top spot.

Thanks to Greggs for starting the Christmas marketing season with such a banger. Great PR for them.

JLR reportedly lets head of design go 

Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Group is not doing itself any favours on the popularity front. Just a few weeks after some Tata organisational rejigging at the top, it has been widely reported that its head of design Gerry McGovern, was let go. 

McGovern was in charge during the Jaguar rebrand fiasco, and the media is linking the Tata Group rejig and the rebrand backlash together.

This becomes a bad PR story, as JLR and its owners are yet to put out any statement. For a brand of this size and stature to not have a comms plan around something so big is puzzling.

Whilst McGovern was head of design, he may have overseen the Jag rebrand, but it was also his name above the door when the new style of Defender came out, which has gone on to win every plaudit and become one of the best-selling cars in its history.

It also comes at a time when the phrase carspreading  — referring to the UK and EU trend of cars getting longer and wider — is becoming more mainstream. The SUV industry will need to come up with designs that address the issues. One could argue that chopping the person who has overseen the design and release of many iconic SUVs is somewhat short-sighted. We are all eagerly waiting to find out what has really happened. Bad PR for JLR and Tata Group, possibly good PR for McGovern, he may not be out of work for long.

Rage-baiting gets the dictionary seal of approval

My 14-year-old daughter will be celebrating, as her favourite pastime for engaging with her brothers has been named as the word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary. Rage-baiting is a phrase that, until very recently, I was blissfully unaware of.

Now, though, thanks to my kids and the dictionary bosses, it has been plastered all over the media in the last week and finally came to my attention. 

The definition is, "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account".

It's Good PR for the Oxford Dictionary crew.

How dare you, Austria is not Dull!

I love campaigns like this. Vienna is apparently labelled as being dull. I never knew this until the following good PR story landed. To counter the dull moniker, the tourism chiefs have called on the residents of Dull, a village in Scotland, to help.

It has offered each of the 80 villagers a free trip to Vienna in January 2026 for a two-night stay in a five-star hotel. The tourist board personally visited every home in Dull to make the offer and even left a goody bag for those who were unable to take up the trip.

The national media loved it and the story has gone global.

Thanks to everyone for the story suggestions, especially Alan S Morrison as ever.