Good PR  

With celebrity nudes being leaked left, right and centre over recent years, each time it happens it gets a little more soul destroying. As a woman and (I’d hope most people would agree) a decent human being with a strong moral compass, it makes me so mad when I see that people have tried to make money off of selling candid photos of nude celebrities or personal ones that have been stolen through hacking.

I know you’re probably wondering why this topic has landed in the ‘good PR’ section of my weekly column, but there’s a reason; trust me. Australian singer Sia, who you may know from such hits as Chandelier and Cheap Thrills, took on the paparazzi this week in a fantastic way.

After discovering that someone was trying to sell nude photos of her, she did a bit of digging and decided to one up them by getting there first. On her Twitter account, the 41-year-old superstar shared an image of which appeared to be a paparazzi style photo of the back of a naked woman on a balcony, with the status “Someone is apparently trying to sell naked photos of me to my fans. Save your money, here it is for free. Every day is Christmas!” The latter part of her tweet is also the name of her festive album, so I think it’s amazing that she used the tweet as an opportunity to get that in there too.

The photo has a watermark from a photo agency and a message that suggests there were 14 more images of Sia for sale. By beating them to it and posting one of the images herself, Sia took back control and stuck two fingers up to the people that were trying to make money from this exploitation. The internet delighted in her response and plenty of media titles were quick to pick up on this from a female empowerment angle.

Bad PR  

The latest iPhone is the most expensive model that Apple has ever released, costing a cool £999, but it has also been revealed to be the most breakable; which has presented somewhat of a PR problem for the global technology brand.

Of course, there will always be the loyal Apple fans that get their hands on every phone the brand releases, but this latest news is sure to be a blow to release of the new iPhone X model. A series of drop tests carried out insurance provider SquareTrade (great PR for it, by the way) has revealed that dropping the device from a height of six foot and it landing on its side can leave the OLED screen shattered, the home swipe function broken and the glass back panel shattered too; whilst a front drop can destroy the phone’s facial recognition camera and leave the screen unresponsive.

When a new screen for the iPhone X has been said to cost £286 minimum to replace, this is not the news that potential buyers want to hear. As someone who smashes iPhone screens like they’re freely available on the NHS, I know I won’t be rushing out to get the X model anytime soon.

I almost forgot to mention that any other breakages outside of a smashed screen are likely to cost in the region of £556, according to Apple’s iPhone repair pricing, so the repair costs could easily start creeping up towards the original purchase price of the device.

Media outlets that covered this news included the likes of Telegraph, Metro, Mail, Fox News and plenty of other titles around the world, which is bad news for brand Apple and the once humble, now ridiculously expensive, iPhone. CNET also carried out their test to see how breakable the iPhone X was, which garnered similar results to SquareTrade’s experiment. Oh dear.

Written by Shannon Peerless, 10 Yetis @ShazzaYeti on Twitter
Seen any good or bad PR lately? You know what to do @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email