Good PR of the week

Amazing Amazon

Was I the only Agency MD who was secretly in awe of Amazon and the Panorama documentary on it? I am negotiating with the team here to see if I can get them to sign up to the Amazon way of working.

If they don’t get a release written within a set time an alarm goes off. If they don’t get an AVE report* done and over to a client in time, an alarm goes off. You get the picture.

I remember when Amazon announced that depot in Swansea and the BBC and every other media clamoured to get a sneak preview, but roll forward a few years and the BBC switches from gusher to basher and does the internet giant over.

So, maybe it is just me who think that it is good PR for Amazon.

Mighty Microsoft

Microsoft also gets the hat tip from me this week, in a cunning PR move that I think was designed to distract the media away from the problems it is having with its new console.

The Xbox One is currently, and very, very allegedly, littered with problems including, the disk drive reportedly being faulty, games freezing and one person in our office claims the controllers are a bit ‘pinchy’.

How could Microsoft deflect attention away?

It very cleverly announced that the repeatedly ‘sweary’ young buggers (and some of the old ones too I imagine) who play on the online game against strangers could get booted off if they are offensive.

Apparently some gamers have already been given the boot for this. The tech press swallowed this hook line and sinker and it is dominating the news, bumping all the negative stuff down.

I am still wrestling with the realisation that I too will soon be booted off. There are only so many times you can get beaten by an eight-year-old Venezuelan playing an online football game before you have to give them the “fuckety-bye-bye” Malcolm Tucker special.

Bad PR of the week

Young veterans

On to the bad stuff, this week’s bad PR goes to 92-year-old war veterans. The Daily Mail ran a story saying that 92-year-old Tony Ball got turned away from buying two bottles of vodka because he had no ID.

The screaming outrage of the Daily Mail nearly caused the Third World War. Sadly, the truth was that the check-out person was joking, but before she could reveal this to Mr Ball, he downed his bottles (on the counter) and went home (via the local news agency).

Tesco could probably be forgiven for wanting this story to keep going, especially as the rumour is that it is about to reveal another drop in sales. Still, we have all learned a valuable lesson, and one that the Germans probably already knew: don’t mess with war veterans.

*Only joshing, just checking everyone was on their toes. What does AVE stand for?

Got anything good or bad that you want to share? andy@10yetis.co.uk or @10yetis on Twitter