The UK's in mourning so this week it's Good and Good PR!

Given the very sad events of the last seven days I have decided to take a break from handing out the brickbats this week so it is Good and Good PR only.

Transport for London

As the country battles to come to terms with the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth we all need to spare a thought and say a massive thank you to those who are doing all that they can to make sure everything goes to plan. Transport for London is an organisation having to cope with unprecedented demand and it deserves a massive thank you and well done.

The way that TfL has handled the communications side of having to explain the pressure that it faces deserves huge credit. No moaning, no shirking, just quiet resilience for the situation that it and its thousands of staff find themselves in. If you find yourself in a transport related queue, spare a thought for the workers before you start moaning. Many are working multiple shifts just to keep our transport beast going.

Royal Warrant Holders Association

Sticking with the royal theme and a whole raft of household-name brands have found themselves in limbo as to the rules about continuing to use the Queen’s Royal Warrant. The Royal Warrant Holders Association tried to clear the situation up this week by announcing that there would be a two-year grace period where the warrants can still be used on packaging and marketing materials.

Over 600 brands are believed to be affected by the situation and given the prestige and honour of receiving a Royal Warrant, you can see why brands were quietly trying to understand what they should be doing. Nice comms by the Royal Warrant Holders Association.

IKEA

Moving, reluctantly, away from the Royal family, it has been a tough week for global brands who have a presence in the UK, especially when it comes to campaign launches. Obviously the UK, for many companies, is just one territory and trying to understand how to play campaign launches must have been difficult. IKEA is one such brand but it still managed to get a global launch out the door with huge success.

Its new furniture range in partnership with Swedish House Mafia (including a mixing desk table) secured global pick up and even some of the UK music trades ran with it as well. Whilst the UK side of the media launch appears to have been put on hold, the global aspect went ahead and as mentioned, did amazingly well. With news starting to spread that some advertising platforms were dragging their feet with regards to letting brands continue to quit their ad slots penalty free this week, IKEA should be commended for doing the right thing with its global campaign and excluding a big push in the UK.

ALDI

Another brand that had plenty to shout about but didn’t is ALDI. This week the budget giant overtook Morrisons to become the fourth largest supermarket retailer in the UK. Given how well ALDI is known for its tongue-in-cheek approach to marketing, you can bet that it had big plans on a dramatic and fun announcement, but instead it was left to the trade organisations to make the announcement in quite a subdued kind of way. Nice one ALDI, great restraint and great work.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney

Finally, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney continue with their crusade to do amazing things in relatively low-key ways. After saving Wrexham AFC, and documenting the process via a runaway hit Disney documentary, they have now turned to highlighting the risk of not getting a colonoscopy when you reach a certain age.

As part of the Wrexham deal Reynolds bet McElhenney that he could not learn to speak Welsh. If he did, Reynolds said he would have his colonoscopy check filmed. The guy learnt Welsh, Reynolds went under the microscope and had to have some potentially risky polyps removed and the McElhenney did the same and found he needed some removing too.

This whole life-saving drama unfolded over social media and got everyone talking about colon cancer, and probably amongst a demographic of people who would not normally talk about things like this.

Football club and actual life, savers. Great PR for the duo!

Got it right or wrong, you know what to do.

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