After my somewhat doom-and-gloom approach to this column last week, the UK has hit a rich vein of positive PR form. Let’s sit down and get amongst it.

Good PR

When asked about truly global, iconic British brands with very classy campaigns you would probably think of British Airways, Land Rover, James Bond and possibly M&S. To retain our feel-good factor, the fact that most of these brands are now owned by overseas companies should be ignored.

Land Rover

Land Rover launched the latest iteration of one of its most iconic vehicles this week; the Range Rover. Truth be told, the Range Rover brand is so globally renowned that it needs very little, if any, pro-active push other than to say the vehicle can now be bought.

That didn’t stop the Land Rover comms team though. They classily ushered out a hugely well-thought-out campaign that highlighted the new enviro-friendly aspects, the amount of patents covering the new technologies being deployed by the car and generally, all of the pomp and ceremony that every car-nut could wish for. Including this 17 (yes seventeen!) minute film.

Land Rover, you have restored my faith in the world of communications, both online, offline and every-line.

Rise at Seven/Vans

I am going to be careful with the next campaign because of the fall-out it has caused amongst them hash-tagging digital PR types on The Twitter. Bottom line, Rise at Seven had a huge global hit that should be celebrated and commended this week; piggybacking its client, Vans (shoes not Transits), on the success of Squid Game in terms of an uplift in sales because of the Netflix show.

The story went massive, like, truly massive and the whole Rise team deserve credit. Landing in Time, Fortune, Daily Mail, South China Morning Post to name just a few of my own favourites.

The accidental mud-slinging (and I firmly believe it was accidental) that came after left a nasty taste in the mouth, but it should not distract from what was achieved. Nice one Rise.

Wrexham FC

Talking about PR machines, what a nice segue over to Wrexham FC. Since Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over the club in 2019 there has been wave after wave of positive PR. This week the wave got even higher thanks to the duo attending their first ever Wrexham game (because of Covid).

The interest and money now pouring into Wrexham can only be a good thing and with a TV show about the new owners now in the offing it can only get better. By the way, Wrexham lost the game where the new owners attended, but even the result played second fiddle to “Deadpool and his mate” turning up.

Amazon

Staying on the Good PR front, Amazon’s hosting division (Amazon Web Services) had a major coup this week thanks to Mi5, Mi6 and The Department of Defence announcing it was in talks with the Bezos Baby as the new home of its data. Despite cries of foul play by the likes of the Daily Mail, the general media take is that, if we are honest, Amazon is one of very few companies who can offer the level of security, reliability and scale that our government departments need.

Another nice week for Amazon on the PR front.

Bad PR

Rishi Sunak

Hunting round for Bad PR and it is tempting to mention The Hut Group for its latest attempt to solve the analyst call cock-up that happened, and I wrote about, a few weeks ago, but Dishy Rishi takes the main spot this week.

As is this government’s seeming wont with regards to policy-creation, it drip fed the Budget ahead of schedule, via leaks, to try and understand the public reaction and make necessary tweaks before the actual announcement time and date.

The speaker of the house, Lindsay Hoyle, has not had it though and delivered a Code-Red bollocking to the Tories. Hoyle highlighted how previous chancellors would have been forced to resign for revealing details of the Budget ahead of schedule. Indeed, it turns out that a former chancellor was forced to resign in 1947 for revealing tax change information to a reporter.

If such resignations were to happen for leaking in today’s day and age, we would have little if any politicians left. Perish the thought!

Got it right or wrong? Berate or celebrate me, over on The Twitter.

Written by Andy Barr, owner of 10 Yetis Digital. Seen any good or bad PR lately? Abuse and contradictory points welcomed over on The Twitter @10Yetis or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email