An action-packed week in the world of Good and Bad PR means there is no time for small talk, let’s get about it, beginning with the hardest of hard hitting stories of the week.

Paddington gets a British Passport

Brilliant PR for the Home Office and also the makers of the film Paddington, who just so happen to have a new film out in a few days. The director revealed that it applied for a passport for Paddington so that he could film in Peru.

They didn’t expect a reply but the Home Office stepped up and showed what a great sense of humour they have by issuing him with a (specimen) one. They listed him as a bear and I am not sure what his occupation was, probably a marmalade eater.

Nice PR for everyone involved and a great break for the Civil Servants away from the next story.

Labour has its Boaty McBoatyface moment

After the 100 day analysis of what Labour has done so far fell flat with the media, they conjured up a surefire way of getting the muggles back on side: a request for the public to give ideas on how the NHS could be improved.

Oh dear. It was very soon apparent that the suggestions were being publicly shared on the internet and the muggles set about doing what they do best, entertaining the masses.

Before you could say “fire Wes Streeting out of a cannon” (an actual suggestion on the site) Civil Servants were scrabbling to take down the more ludicrous ideas. My favourites were having a compulsory Wetherspoons at every hospital to improve morale and something to do with pole dancers and bed baths.

Labour made light of it and although it gets a gentle nod for Bad PR from me, awareness wise, the story went everywhere and that could mean that maybe, just maybe, a genius will come up with a brilliant idea.

My own idea, why thank you for asking: The NHS works on 26-day cycles. Each day is assigned a letter from the alphabet, and you can only use NHS services on the day assigned to the first letter of your first name. Flawed, yes, maybe, just a little. I am day one by the way!

Blunt end of the deal for James

Sticking with a “letting the people decide” theme, James Blunt has played a blinder with his recent marketing campaign. Just the same as the rest of you, I can only name one of his songs but, you can’t argue that the guy is funny.

Take a look at his Tweeting X replies for starters. And then, you have his new marketing campaign for the re-release of his first album. He said that if it got to number one he was going to change his name and let the public decide what his name would be.

It didn’t get to the number one slot but the coverage around the name change kept sales ticking up. On top of this, he then went out with some headphones and got randoms to listen to his song to try and guess who it was. Only one person did. The majority thought it was Lewis Capaldi.

He even wound up the trolls (I suspect to gain further reach) by saying he had filmed it in Coventry, when it was clearly London. Again, the internet kicked off.

The self-effacing humour is why the nation loves James Blunt. More celeb’s could do with taking a leaf out of his book and not taking themselves so seriously.

Tesco gets help from billboard

There is very little to say about the next story other than, it is very good and any ad campaign that leaks over into consumer press is always very impressive.

Well done to Tesco for its latest billboard campaign, in partnership with BBH London. You will have seen it. No logo, just the blue flecks from the brand and above each one an item of food that spells out the brand name.

It received the ultimate accolade, one of the German discount supermarkets copied it and inserted a pithy caption. Footnote, I am amazed neither Lidl nor Aldi have done something about England FC now having a German manager.

Great one Tesco.

McDonald's is not loving it – I am though

I think McDonalds deserves praise for the way it has handled accidentally strolling into an American Election situation. Putting his politics to the side for one moment, I loved the imagery of Trump serving burgers. I feel like the images will come back to haunt him one day, but historically speaking, it could go on to be one of the iconic moments of the campaign (I am not joking and yes, behind the post-assassination attempt image).

Harris got embroiled in her own McDonald's story that was not so positive (and which I don’t think should matter at all). What was interesting though, was how one of the world’s most respected comms machines fired into action.

Their rebuttal team was in full flow, but the brand put out zero in terms of statements about both stories. They will have been under huge pressure to say something, and whatever they said would have been misrepresented in some way. Neither story was of their doing, so they left well alone and came out of it unscathed.

The cynics are saying it was contrived because they had a significant food safety warning over in the US a few days after, I just think the brand was preoccupied with the messaging around that and knew the election story would quickly pass. Good PR by McDonald's

Intuition tells me that you never ask a journalist to delete a recording

Intuit and their comms team have had a shocker this week. The CEO took part in a podcast on The Verge and did not like his answers to certain questions about tax lobbying in America.

In my head, he did what any over-thinking CEO would do, shout at the PR team and ask them to get parts of it deleted. No really.

The poor head of comms dutifully fired off an email asking for the offending parts to be removed and he too was then outed by The Verge for making such a request and the story took on even greater traction.

I bet you eight single dollars that the head of comms warned that this was not the best course of action but was overruled. He is now name checked in the article and will be listed in University PR lectures as someone who got it wrong, when I bet it was not his idea or want. Bad PR for Intuit, maybe more media training for the CEO is needed rather than throwing the comms team under the bus.

Crypto Influencers Get FCA’d

This is definitely good PR for the FCA. They have revealed that they have now interviewed 20 “finfluencers” (yuk) under caution for flogging dodgy financial products.

The FCA flexed its criminal law muscles to try and clamp down on these people and their pushing of illegal products, and or, not declaring they were getting paid to do so. The FCA has not named any of the 20 that were interviewed under caution but the purpose of doing so is twofold.

It raises awareness to muggles that someone with Turkey teeth flogging crypto products on TikTok that they claim made them millionaires, may actually not be true. It also fires a warning shot to other influencers who are considering switching over to the fin side of life.

Good PR for the FCA and the comms team for getting the story out so far and wide.