This week’s halo is worn by Lynx for its heavenly stunts, but Microsoft Bing and Burger King chiefs fail to impress

Good PR of the Week

Lynx Excites marketing community

Thanks to Ian Williams at Lewis PR and Rebecca Taylor at Octopus for Tweeting with this.

 In what can only be described as a pretty full-on marketing campaign, Lynx seems to have got a few of you excited.

The deodorant brand has again turned to model Kelly Brook as chief lustee, casting her in new ads and a branded game as part of its "even angels will fall" campaign for its Excite range. While the brilliant coverage this tie-up has achieved isn’t quite good enough to achieve Good PR status, the originality of the brand’s augmented reality “ambushes” is.

At London Victoria, Lynx cleverly managed to engage passers-by with the aid of three scantily clad angels they have to “tempt down” from heaven. Essentially, a tech team were able to ensure that the girls would appear alongside – and interact with – members of the public standing inside a branded square asking people to “look up” at the huge station screen.

It typically resulted in men thrusting at the angels, but public displays of sexual physicality aside, it’s a clever effort that shows that Lynx understands the benefits of engaging with target consumers in a fun way.

Watch the stunt below. The Lynx site states that the angles will be at the Birmingham Bullring this weekend.

Bad PR of the Week

Microsoft under the social media Microscope

Thanks to Paul Coxon at Warwickshire County Council for Tweeting with this one!

 In yet another catastrophic demonstration of lack of tact using social media, Microsoft Bing has been hammered this week for promoting the brand on the back of the tragedy in Japan.

By Tweeting: @bing: How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.

The company was seen to be trying to benefit from the earthquake, and although to its credit (six and a half hours later and after a Twitter backlash) an apology was issued through the account stating that $100K had been donated, the immediacy of Twitter and web publishing ensured that the damage had already been done. Microsoft has since said it will be donating $2m in total.

U-G-L-Y, UK ain’t got no alibi

 Thanks to Lisa Wisniowski at Stickyeyes for sending this one in.

On Monday, Burger King chief executive Bernardo Hees “tried to connect to his audience” while addressing students in Chicago ... by slating UK food and claiming that our women are mingers. Obviously not his words, but you get the gist.

While talking about his time studying at the University of Warwick, he made his PR gaffe, which company spokespeople were quick to respond to, stating: "Mr Hees apologises if his comment has offended anyone. It was intended as a humorous anecdote to connect with his audience."

How humorous it is depends on how happy you are with the head of a large company making a public slur against a whole nation of potential customers happy to otherwise go to McDonald’s. As a nation of brilliant complainers, we’re the first to grumble about the UK, but as soon as a foreigner does it, I feel strangely proud that we band together to moan about them, too.

 A Telegraph article with nearly 400 comments puts it to readers that one way for British women to make themselves more attractive might be “to avoid a visit to one of Mr Hees’ fast food outlets”.