Good PR

Supermarket winners
We’ll start off the good PR with a good story relating to supermarkets (before we move onto bad for supermarkets).

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Asda have all made the landmark claim that they’re going to stop using black plastic by the end of the year; this year to be exact; 2019. Iceland and Aldi are said to be jumping on board too and ditching the black plastic by the end of 2020, and Marks & Spencer are bringing up the rear.

Black plastic ends up in landfill or at an incinerator because it contains a carbon pigment not detectable by recycling machines. Switching to recycling materials is the way forward and it’s fantastic to see supermarkets and their affiliated retailers get on board.

Drink aware
Let’s also give a quick shout out to Greene King pubs and Coca Cola who are teaming up for the 10th year in a row over the Christmas period. If you’re the designated driver, simply show your keys at the bar and you’ll get a free soft drink in over 1,000 Greene King pubs.

It is National Road Safety Week too – so the message here is: stay safe. If you want to drink, don’t drive.

Bad PR

Supermarket losers  
One man, who wants to remain anonymous (for obvious, snooty reasons), kicked off to the media this week because he purchased a tray of roasted vegetables at his local Waitrose, only to get home and find an Aldi sticker sticking out from underneath the Waitrose one. His exact words were:

“I was really disappointed. I use Waitrose and Ocado for good reasons – reputation and home delivery.”

His issue didn’t lie in the fact the Aldi tray of roasted vegetables costs £1.29 whereas the same at Waitrose costs £2; no, his issue was that it was prepared and labelled for the wrong supermarket. We all know that factories make the same products, on the same production line, with different packaging stations at the end; so the same product will be sold in multiple stores at varying costs. If anything, that should be his issue – that he was charged 71p more than what he would’ve been charged if he’d gone elsewhere.

Someone on quality check definitely wasn’t doing their job that day.

The comments on social media are hilarious though… first-world problems, and all that.

Weighty issue
A nightclub in Dubai, Fusion Club, has hit the news this week for offering free drinks to women based on their weight. The heavier you are, the more free drinks you receive; women simply have to weigh themselves near the bar to gain one Arab Emirates Dirham for every one kilogram that she weighs.

Whilst this sounds great – it’s encouraging women to be healthy – it’s actually in the same respect skinny shaming those who don’t weigh very much and, potentially, encouraging adult obesity.

The club itself says it is known for regularly running “crazy” deals that can be enjoyed by both men and women, and this has certainly got us talking, but I’m not a fan I must admit.

Written by Samantha Summers, PR account manager at 10 Yetis Digital. Seen any good or bad PR lately? You know what to do @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10Yetis.co.uk on email