Good PR

Free money

I had another ‘why didn’t I think of that for a client?’ moment today when scouring social media for some examples of good PR for this very column.

Insurers Beagle Street has carried out a stunt in London which has caught the attention of the Metro, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph and others.

A team spent 125 hours folding 500 £10 notes into origami dogs (beagles ... get the link?) and dotted them all around London for people to find. Apparently, the stunt aimed to put money back in people’s pockets to raise awareness of the fact that people overpay on their life insurance premium by £109 a year (not with Beagle, hopefully).

The pictures of £10 notes as origami dogs were pretty cool and obviously the national media thought so too. As the stunt went as wide as areas of London like Croydon and Bexley, it also gave the brand the opportunity to get coverage in local newspapers in those areas too.

With £5,000 in total across London up for grabs, this is a stunt that will definitely get people talking (and walking to see if they can find any).

Rumour has it that the stunt is going to be repeated in other cities across the UK in the coming weeks, so watch this space – and, if you see a random piece of origami art that looks suspiciously like a ten pound note, pick it up! If it turns out to be a misshapen fag packet, then I sincerely apologise for encouraging you.

Beagle Street insurance, I salute you!

Bad PR

Tiddly toddler

The last thing any food or drink establishment wants to do is accidentally make a toddler drunk. So, members of staff at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina, have been left a bit red in the face following doing exactly that.

Two-year-old Gabriele Gilliam was taken to the restaurant by her parents to celebrate her dad’s 25^th birthday, but she apparently began “feeling sick” and “kissing everything“. It soon became apparent that instead of the cranberry juice her parents had ordered for her, the toddler had been served sangria and was intoxicated. The tot had told her parents that the drink tasted funny, after which mum Tiffany and dad Derek realised that it was not the soft drink they had ordered.

Her parents later took her to hospital, where it was confirmed that she was suffering from accidental alcohol ingestion, but she was not seriously hurt by having drunk the wine and fruit punch. The family’s bill was written off by the restaurant, which has since apologised for the incident. I smell a staff sacking! Plenty of media outlets around the world have picked up on this, so it’s not the best publicity for the restaurant.

Thin ice

In other news, American website The Chive is in hot water after a 27-year-old recovering anorexic spotted that it had accidentally used images of her fluctuating weight in a feature about amazing weight loss before and after images. The pictures had been posted on Imgur by Ann Marie Sengillo from Ohio, in an album called “My recovery from an eating disorder”. The pictures documented her road to recovery and highlighted how relapses happen to sufferers. 

However, when the images were taken and used on The Chive, the site featured them as a positive weight-loss example. Ann Marie said she was “filled with so much rage” and the story spread like wildfire. However, The Chive has since apologised in a new article that has been posted with the title “An apology to one strong woman”.

Shannon Haigh, 10 Yetis, @ShazzaYeti on Twitter

Seen any good or bad PR recently, you know what to do, @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10yetis.co.uk on email.