Is it even Christmas without a Good and Bad PR wrap-up of the year? And what a year it has been!

Some brands have deliberately kept themselves in the headlines thanks to fantastic comms, such as Guinness. But, many brands and organisations had a rocky year.

Here is your month by month 2025 tour of Good and Bad of PR, or read back through the entire Good and Bad PR year.

January

This year started as 2024 finished, with the discount supermarket brands dominating the media for a multitude of stories.

Aldi kept its name in the headlines by announcing improved pay for workers in the same week it lost a court case around brand infringement.

Do you remember Deepseek? Me neither. January was the month, well, the week, that it landed, dominated the media, faced legal action and trudged back off to obscurity again. For me, Deepseek represents the continual onslaught of AI dross that we have all faced in 2025.

The first month of the year also brought the Christmas supermarket sales updates. M&S had a stonker, Asda had a stinker. It had a brilliant year in comms, largely thanks to its charismatic leader, Stuart Machin.

February

February was a full on Trump-tariff month. The first brand to use the tariffs as an excuse to reduce staff numbers was Estee Lauder. Funnily enough, it is the only time this columnist has ever mentioned that brand in the column.

Virgin Money had a no-love February thanks to its newly installed AI customer-chat bot classing the name “Virgin” as profanity and blocking users from typing it into their conversations. Red faces all round on that one.

Apple however had a very strong month thanks to some long-term-strategic-genius. When it was forced by EU law makers to loosen its grip on the mobile app market, which meant that a few apps of the porn variety snuck through. When the EU lawmakers went into uproar at the offensive content the iBrand just sat back, iLaughed and said this was exactly what it iFeared. A great win for Apple.

March

At the end of 2024 I foretold that the water companies would feature heavily in my column through 2025. I was not wrong. It got to the point where I ignored the usual shenanigans that they got up to, but by March I’d had enough.

When United Utilities was given permission to charge muggles more to help the brand fix its under-maintained pipes that were leaking actual shit into the watercourse, I could resist no longer.

March also saw my first outing of Colossal Biosciences for its hair-brained idea of “de-extincting” dinosaurs, like a Woolly Mammoth.

Peppa Pig won global headlines when it was announced that her parents were due to have another child. It was even mentioned by politicians, sigh. Hat tip Pretty Green.

The Cop30 crew got a beating when it was revealed that it cleared parts of a forest in Brazil to help delegates get to the venue, you couldn’t make this stuff up! Think of the poor comms team.

April

In April Colossal Biosciences tried to regain ground on its dino-plans by announcing that it had successfully de-extincted Dire Wolves (the giganta-wolves from Game of Thrones).

Meanwhile, M&S introduced us to the term “cyber-incident”. The term “cyber-hacks” was not in its lexicon. However, it did successfully rebrand these kinds of things and its comms team deserves some praise.

Also, Tunnocks Tea Cakes were taken off the banned list by the RAF for the first time since a WW2 cockpit explosion incident occurred. This was probably the biggest media hit of the month!

May

JCB kicked off May by successfully lobbying for hydrogen diggers to drive on UK roads, thus reducing the pollution levels in our cities. The future us thanks them.

If M&S received praise for the way in which it dealt with its cyber incident, the Co-op went the other way. In response to questions about the impact of the hack on its own brand, it allegedly told a few white lies. Fortunately, the hackers were on hand to issue their own media statement to clarify what data they had taken, and the brand was made to look somewhat foolish.

It’s important to enjoy your success while you can and, on that note, it was good to hear Jaguar Land Rover crow about its £2.5bn profit in May.

Heathrow Airport also came out badly from the investigation into the power cut that happened in April. It was discovered that in the early stages of the issue, its CEO was unable to be woken to take the helm and show leadership.

Elsewhere in April, Labour continued its habit of scoring own goals by botching the announcement of its first re-nationalised rail company, whilst Jeremy Clarkson continued to be the mouthpiece of the farming community via the Clarkson’s Farm new season launch.

June

June started with the news that a Dutch museum was going to put a 200-year-old, used, condom on display. I am not sure why this was as big of a global hit as it was with the media, but it worked.

London Tech Week had a shocker after it would not allow one of its speakers into the venue as they brought their child in a pushchair. Jeff Bezos also got hammered by the people of Venice who did not want his wedding to take place in their city.

Tesco upset the Welsh in June. It once again demonstrated how a one-size-fits-all marketing approach does not work, as it promoted the England women’s team in Wales.

On the plus side, British Steel announced that it had agreed a contract to provide 75% of British train tracks with its steel.

July

July gave me one of my favourite stories of the year. The much-maligned Met police in London revealed that two undercover coppers dressed as Batman and Robin were catching street scammers across the city. The costumes allowed them to sneak up in a far more covert fashion than its usual uniform would allow. M&S did it again in July with the launch of its Strawberry and Cream sandwich that landed in time for Wimbledon.

August

August is always a slow month, but it was a fantastic one for Lidl. It ended Aldi’s 20-month reign as the cheapest supermarket according to consumer rights and affiliate specialists Which?

The most eye-catching story was a zoo in Denmark asking for pet owners who have had enough to pass them over their pets so they could be euthanised and fed to the zoo animals. Nope. No one liked that story.

Crisis comms lovers should check out the good PR I gave to Drax in August too. Drax is a fantastic example of a brand who knows how to push back against an aggressive media. It faced down some serious accusations with dignity and resolve and it worked.

September

September was a big month for the UK comms landscape. The Labour Party brought in David Dinsmore to try and wrestle its messaging. He faced an immediate disaster with various Cabinet minister level scandals.

Jaguar Land Rover started to feel the negative media effect of the cyber-attack with some tone-deaf messaging to workers who were struggling to pay the bills.

Asda was a brand on the ascendency. Fresh from announcing its petrol prices war a few months previously, it also launched the cheapest meal deal offer in September.

Fujitsu may never fully recover its brand reputation after the Post Office scandal, and it certainly won’t if it keeps pitching for new business when it promised not to.

October

October was a truly horrid month for the Government on the comms front. It reached a peak with CNN reporting that Sir Keir was the UK’s most unpopular Prime Minister since these kinds of records started being kept. It has not got any better for him, or the party.

There was some good news from an unlikely source though: the water industry. South West Water announced that it had deployed AI monitoring trials that they estimated had prevented 200 issues of pollution. AI is even able to save the water industry!

Press Gazette, who had some fantastic scoops in 2025, discovered that the digital PR industry contained a company that was trawling the likes of Haro and enabling AI comments to be auto fired out to journalists.

Cider makers were the latest to find an unusual issue from the long-hot-summer. It had made the sugar level of the apples much higher and was causing super-strong cider to accidentally be made.

November

You guessed it, Labour had another howler but was this the month that we started to see a bit more of the Dinsmore influence? The Reeves budget had more pre-flip-flopping than a Boris Johnson night out. In the end the OBR accidentally leaked it, but the run-up is best described as chaotic.

On a far more positive note, Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts did a video walk through of its successful financial results and it went down hugely well with media and city analysts alike.

The big news in November, and one which has carried on into December, has to be the BBC Panorama / Trump audio edit. Trump has now started legal proceedings.