Business

Crying over spilt (Halal) milk

/ Gerry / Leave a comment

The power – and pain – of agenda-driven social media lobbying has curdled (pun 1) the relationship between the Fleurieu Milk and Yoghurt Company and some of its online detractors, specifically Restore Australia. Anti-IslamisationBoycott Halal baseball cap activists have targeted and bombarded the South Australian Fleurieu dairy company in many prominent social media channels; channels that offer unexpurgated commentary and unedited critiques often prove fertile breeding grounds for a culture (pun 2) of brand-bashing and, oftentimes, personally-biased and uninformed venting.

In posting this, my aim is not to defend nor attack either interest in this incident but simply to illustrate a modern PR disaster dynamic; that what starts small online, can snowball into a capital city news report and eventually move onto our national TV news screens. Social media is all about reputation, as well as stakeholder engagement and influence. Hat-tip (pun 3) to Zazzle for the image.

Retailer and manufacturer 'creamed' over fascist coffee condiment

/ Gerry / 3 Comments

Hitler creamerI haven’t posted on PR Disasters for a while; the usual cavalcade of drunken debauchery, emotional immaturity, ill-judged utterances, policy backflips and PR nightmares leave me with a grey ennui. BUT THEN…a story pops up that’s kinda one out of the box. It appears that a Swiss retailer is doing a PR retreat after stocking coffee creamers featuring the faces of famous facists – the rest is, as they say, history…

Ministerial advice, lobbying and industry ethics sullied in food ratings fiasco

/ Gerry / Leave a comment

Health Food Rating Website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When almost two years of planning goes into a joint food health initiative and the corresponding public information website gets ORDERED off air ON THE SAME DAY IT GOES LIVE one might expect evidence of stakeholder dissonance.

I caught up with a gripping analysis of the Fiona Nash, AFGC and Alastair Furnival furore courtesy of the Background Briefing team of Anna Whitfield and Ann Arnold at ABC – great case analysis. HT SMH for screengrab.

House PR's 'Tweets for Tickets' BRIT Awards PR Disaster

/ Gerry / 1 Comment

Naughty pee-arr company House PR apparently offered (UK) Telegraph journalist Tim Walker Brit Awards press accreditation in exchange for publishing promotional tweets with the Mastercard Twitter handle and its #PricelessSurprises hashtag. The email requested Walker publish tweets before, during and after the event, and guarantee Mastercard’s inclusion in any post event write-ups, both print and online, with hashtags and URLs included. #PricelessSurprises
In the spirit of PR fellowship and PR disaster recovery assistance, I can offer HousePR some coincidentally hot-off-the-press pointers here:
TimWalkerTweet (H/t to Ken Garner and The Drum)