Good PR of the week

Football clubs go social

Mexican Primera Division football club Jaguares has printed its player’s Twitter user names on the back of its playing shirts, along with the Twitter profile of sponsor Cerveza Sol.  

Personally, I love the idea and think it’s a brilliant way to a) give fans another way to communicate with their favourite players; b) increase the chances of people following and connecting with the sponsor (which with typical brand-awareness shirt sponsorship just doesn’t happen); and c) perhaps remind the players that they are associated with their club online as well as offline. Who knows, it may prevent them from doing and saying stupid things that damage the club’s reputation as well as their own.

Also, Manchester United has announced this week that it’s to be launching a “global social network“ – targeting 500m potential fans.

Engage with Shippam’s Paste

Remembering that Coca Cola’s successful Facebook page was launched by two fans of the brand*, it’s no secret that communities can be the drivers of a brand’s presence on social networks.

With this is mind, if you aren’t already, get following @ShippamsPaste on Twitter. The account has been confirmed as a fake by Shippam’s PR team (which means the company is obviously aware of it and allowing it to continue, rather than kicking off and going the legal route other companies would). The account features a social media intern called Ben, who is trying to promote Shippam’s Paste by inspiring engagement.

Here are a few recent Tweets:

Not only is it getting the Shippam’s name out there in a funny way, it’s also highlighting a more timely point.

As Dan Leahul says on The Wall Blog:

“The account is clearly having a laugh at the marketing industry and its need for brands to have a digital media strategy, no matter how established or tedious, like crab paste, the brand may be.”

*Incidentally, Coke’s page was recently named as having the highest engagement of any company with a Facebook presence – but after you read that, you have to read: Engagement: Fashionable yet Bankrupt by Wieden and Kennedy’s Martin Weigel.

Thanks to Jamie Ivory at Hotwire PR for tweeting me about the account!

Bad PR of the week

Noel Gallagher snubs journalist

A journalist (Evening News music writer Gary Flockhart) who wrote a negative review of Noel Gallagher’s album calling it a “letdown” was this week refused tickets to a gig at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. He then went public with the email from the singer’s PR team stating why:

"Sorry Gary – not going to be able to spare any (is ridiculously oversubscribed and can't fit everybody in). That piece you wrote about him last week didn't exactly help your cause to be honest."

Personally, I’m of the belief that journalists have no God-given right to be granted freebies on the basis that they may – may being the operative word – write about your clients. Much like the Duke Nukem story from June this year (where a PR said he’d refuse to provide future review copies of games to journalists following poor reviews – and then lost the PR account), I think it’s only right that PR teams are careful about who they do decide to provide with the limited promotional resources. It’s all part of appropriate targeting, after all.

Why should the PR team give space to a journalist who’s not likely to give positive coverage when they could give tickets to the apparently oversubscribed event to somebody who may? It’s all part of their job to protect and enhance their client’s reputation.

The issue here for me, though – and what merits the inclusion of this in this week’s Bad PR - is of doing so publicly or, rather, in a way that leaves a trail that can be used publicly.

Cheers to Jamie McHale of StickyEyes for getting in touch with the Guardian link.

Great grandmother refused alcohol by One Stop

You know when people say Britain’s going to the dogs? Health and safety this, bureaucracy that, “whatever happened to common sense?” The Daily Mail brigade must have literally wet their collective pants when they saw this story, which is obviously bad PR for One Stop, Tweeted to me by Freud’s Jamie Walden.

The story in short:

A 92-year-old great grandmother went into her local One Stop to buy some whisky. She stupidly forgot to take ID, because, of course, she has retained her teenage looks so well that 75 years of aging have taken no toll. The staff member refused the sale on the grounds that she had no ID. She went to the papers. One Stop released a frankly ridiculous statement, saying the store “had to enforce a strict 'no ID, no sale' policy or risk losing its licence“.

While the One Stop PR team will be thinking, “we stuck to our guns, we’ve got the message out that we won’t allow under-age selling“, it couldn’t look more ridiculous in doing so. Common sense has clearly taken a backseat to procedure in this instance.

Have you seen any good or bad PR?

Contact PR Rich Leigh with it by Tweeting him @GoodandBadPR or by emailing rich@10yetis.co.uk throughout the week and we’ll happily credit you for your trouble.

Good and Bad PR is a feature on the blog of 10 Yetis PR Agency.