Racing through another seven days in the world of public relations and I am back with the hits and misses of the week. Eyes down, look in, as they say in the world of bingo.

Eat, Drink, Meet in a beer garden

I saw this story a few times in the syndicated media and a few other places and loved it. I know just how much work goes into creating a regional variation release and then having to target the right journalists. Kudos to Eat Drink Meet and Leopard Co for perfectly timing a beer garden index with a UK heatwave landing.

The coverage was everywhere and the patience the brand and agency must have shown to hold on to the data whilst waiting for the perfect heatwave is admirable. Links came flying in from some high authority sites, so in Google’s eyes the noise is perfect.

As we all know, the Digital PR brigade is an uppity and competitive bunch but there is little to moan about from this fantastic campaign. Relevancy, links, and brand noise that carried over to social as well. Tick, tick, tick. A well-deserved winner of this week’s first good PR.

Never Mind the Bollocks, here is a legal letter

An opticians in Dundee that went by the name of Spex Pistols has been forced to rebrand thanks to a cease-and-desist legal letter from the Sex Pistols. The media reports said the band’s legal reps didn’t like the logo the shop used, but were fine with the name.

The owner decided that if he couldn’t have the logo, he was changing the whole thing and has gone for Land O’Spex, in a nod to a former bakery shop that had ceased trading. Yeah, I don’t know why either.

Personally, I would have gone for REM, or if the boss was called Joe, then maybe “Cotton Eye”. Poor form by what was once considered to be the most rebellious and controversial band on the planet.

This also represents real risk for other retailers with shonky names. I used to drive past a mini-supermarket in London called Safebury’s, and in Cornwall there is a coffee shop on the beach near (town-name redacted as I ain’t no snitch) called CostaBucks. The next big name related case though must be the famous Irish kebab chain called Abrakebabra, who will no doubt soon receive a legal letter from Paul Daniels’ estate. Bad PR for the Sex Pistols.

Airbnb gets a complete BBC puff piece, and truly deserves it

Not many brands out there can get on the BBC just by announcing the launch of a few new in-app features. Airbnb can, and this is why it gets a good PR gong from me this week. It is great work by the comms team.

Nine out of ten PR’s would be told to sling their hook if they approached the BBC with a story like this. Demonstrating its global appeal once again though, the launch of new bookable features inside the app, such as hiring a private chef and massage therapists, gave the global travel company a happy PR ending.

The coverage is truly spectacular, and the press office and associated agencies around the world deserve huge praise. The amount of pick-up was such that it is starting to rival the combined amount of coverage that Amazon gets with its rinse and repeat drone-delivery story. The difference — Airbnb will make sure what it is promising, will actually happen.

This also demonstrates the power of the brand. Airbnb is nowhere near the top 100 biggest companies in the world, yet it treats its brand like it is a top five company. Its ads feel very Apple-esque, and its commitment to putting the customer first and dominating its space smacks of Amazon. It acts big, announces big things, and is rewarded with big coverage. Great PR for Airbnb.

Jaguar Land Rover proves marketing land needs to STFU

I was one of the many gobby mouth pieces of the industry who questioned the Jaguar rebrand. I too was one of the army of Land Rover fans who questioned how successful the new Defender would be against the backdrop of the older, more rugged version.

It turns out, what we say is not necessarily a reflection of what the Muggles think. How dare they!

Jaguar Land Rover just posted £2.5bn profit. The shining jewels in the profit crown are the record sales of the new-style Defender and the launch of the Jaguar Type 00.

This follows its announcement that it is going to venture back into selling in the USA, despite Trump’s tariffs, and it looks like there is no slowing the vehicle making giant.

Great PR for the brand, and well deserved too. The real lesson is, never listen to what the so-called experts say… well, apart from in this column.

Cold showers needed after rugby players strip off for new shower launch

I am a massive Gloucester Rugby fan. Never really had an inkling to see the players in the showers, but still, this campaign from Mira Showers and the lovely folk over at Bottle PR, definitely caught my eye.

They win a much-respected good PR gong from me because, well, I imagine that you need something different to grab attention when launching a shower. This is where Bottle excels. The concept is simple. Mira is launching a new cold shower product (it also does warm and hot showers too I am told).

To demonstrate how effective the cold shower is, it filmed the reaction of the professional rugby players — who need this kind of thing to recover from the rigours of the game — and the pictures didn’t fail to deliver. The BBC alone ran it as a picture story, and that gives the brand plenty to shout about.

To disappoint those currently heading to the dark-web to find the pictures, they were all shot from the chest up! A nice product and sports brand collaboration, and a good PR win for Mira and Bottle.

Blue nose how they came up with such a good idea

As a lifelong fan of the red wearing ball-kickers of Liverpool, it really pains me to give the blue team a good PR gong, but I am doing it anyway.

Everton’s men's team are moving out of their much-loved home of Goodison Park and over to a swanky new stadium on the seafront, in Liverpool. The old stadium was due to be knocked down and probably developed into housing.

The new owners of the club have done the right thing and committed to keeping the stadium on, and even better, it will now be the exclusive home of the women’s football team. I think this will probably make it the biggest and best stadium that any women’s team in the UK can count as their own, dedicated, home ground.

Kudos to Everton, a very strong move and rightful winners of a good PR nod from me.

One hundred humans v one gorilla? The fight just got interesting

And finally… if, like me, you have teens in your household, you will no doubt have recently been asked, “Dad, who do you think would win in a fight between 100 humans and one gorilla”.

For me, the answer is obvious, one gorilla would crush us all, easily.

Apparently, according to the wisdomous-children, “this is what all old people say”. They have stopped using ChatPMT for their homework and are instead using it to run virtual role-play scenarios to see how it would pan out. In most of these, the gorilla murders lots of us but tires quickly, which gives the humans a chance.

This has all changed though, with a revelation by University of Oxford scientists (again, nothing better to do lads) that chimpanzees, orangutans and alike use jungle plants to medicate themselves. The university filmed chimpanzees using healing plants and jungle orientated first-aid equipment to heal open-wounds and self-medicate.

This tells me that the one gorilla involved in the massive human brawl could no doubt stand a far greater chance of winning, as it knows how to heal its wounds using its natural surroundings. More worryingly for our 100 humans, the gorilla may also know which plants will prevent it from gassing out too early like a hairy Conor McGregor. A gorilla on a hallucinogenic, what a thought.

Big thanks this week to Jasmine Maguire, Alan S Morrison and every Everton fan who knows I am a Liverpool fan for sending me that story with the line “I bet you won’t run this will you”.