Good and Bad PR: Spoiler alert! Good PR for Spoiled.io, but ‘racist’ chocolate is terrible PR for Waitrose

Sunday marks the official return of Game of Thrones, with season eight hitting UK screens on Monday (we have to wait an extra day than the US).

I’m only a few episodes into season two (very late to the party, I know), so have accepted that I have no chance in catching up before the new season. Therefore, spoilers are going to be near impossible for me to avoid (even now, I’m at risk of finding out what happens in the early season from my own memory of people in the office discussing the plot years ago and even from GIFs popping up showing scenes I’ve not watched yet).

A site that enables you to ruin the show for die-hard fans (and maybe even their lives if they’re that obsessed) is doing the rounds again and getting lots of good media coverage in the approach to the new season.

Spoiled.io enables people to send spoilers to their sworn enemies (or friends, if they’re just in it for the wind up), completely anonymously. This works if the other person usually watches the show after it has aired and tries to avoid spoilers, because the message is sent as soon as the show airs. The show airs in the UK at 2am in the early hours of Monday morning and again at 9pm (Sky Atlantic and NOW TV), so technically the victim could wake up on Monday morning with a spoiler in their inbox.

Spoiled.io did the rounds in 2016, but it’s picked up coverage this week in the likes of Daily Mail, Metro, Indy, UNILAD and many more.

Bad PR

Waitrose is in the public eye’s bad books this week after the supermarket released some Easter chocolates there were accused of being racist.

The gift pack had three chocolate ducklings inside – a white, dark and milk chocolate version – but each duckling was named. The white chocolate duckling was given the name ‘Fluffy’, the milk chocolate one was called ‘Crispy’ and the dark chocolate one was called ‘Ugly’.

Many people were quick to question why the dark chocolate duck had been labelled the ‘Ugly’ one, whilst others said people had too much time on their hands and it was just an innocent chocolate treat based on the children’s song.

This is the tweet that brought the issue to light and is referenced in many of the media articles about it:

After attracting almost 1,000 comments and a string of negative press for Waitrose, the supermarket chain pulled the product from the shelves, changed the packaging to remove the names of the ducklings and popped them back on sale for two pounds lower, at £6.

Waitrose also issued an apology and said that it didn’t mean to cause any offense, but the negative headlines are already live and the damage, some would say, is done.

Written by Shannon Peerless, 10 Yetis @ShazzaYeti on Twitter. Seen any good or bad PR lately? You know what to do @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email