10 Yetis Good and Bad PR - Tuesday 24th February 2009

Good PR

Google Gmail crashed today. If you're a social media user, you already knew that.

However, the fact that it has received so much coverage is testament to the fact that millions around the world rely on it (or, as Bad PR will point out, the media agenda allowed for it!), and the fact that Google fixed the problem so quickly, whilst being transparent the whole way through is really indicative of the great PR team they have there.

Sure, they will have lost a few users during the course of the day, but do those users really think that other online email clients with GBs of Inbox space, for free, by the way, will not experience the odd hiccup here and there? I'm pretty confident that they may lose users, but they'll also see a return influx in a week or two's time!

Bad PR

Bad PR for the BBC today... I'm feeling suicidal as a matter of fact.

Since we have had a rather shiny new TV in the office, it's been brilliant. Jeremy K-I mean BBC News has provided us with up to date breaking news in the background which we have been able to act on and ultimately gain client coverage because of. At least, that's what we say to clients.

Today must have been the slowest news agenda since Snowgate at the beginning of Feb, because all we've been subjected to by the news channels, specifically BBC News has been a 71 year old skating around Southport on roller blades interspersed between 'news' about the Hudson River plane crash, which I swear I saw 2 weeks ago.

You read that right. I have been literally mindfunked today by a seemingly never-ending series of CCTV clips of a geriatric man giving it large on 8 wheels. I can't take it anymore. It even gave me the opportunity to send a release I wouldn't normally have sent to consumer press out, asserting that the BBC's coverage drove me to it, that if a man titting about in public can gain blanket coverage, my trade-y release sure as hell could !

Bad BBC. Bad.

On another note (didn't lead with this because my professional views on obesity and diabetes are well documented!), diabetes has risen by 74% in the last 10 years. That'll be the fat gene, then.