Greggs eats up publicity from Osborne ‘I can’t remember the last time I had a pasty’ claim
Ishbel Macleod looks at how a comment by George Osborne has led to Greggs trending for two days.
As a Twitteraholic, I clicked immediately yesterday to find out what was happening when Greggs started trending in the UK. I then found out, of course, that it was because chancellor George Osborne had said he can’t remember the last time he had eaten a Greggs pasty.
In case you’re wondering, this shocking announcement was made since part of the budget means that tax now needs to be paid on hot food (such as sausage rolls and pasties)
A picture of this ‘breaking news’ was posted on our Facebook page and led to much hilarity – but the story did not end there.
The newspapers all covered the story this morning, which led to Greggs trending again- along with #pieshakespeare and #pastygate.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the political press offices jumped on the bandwagon – with Ed Miliband and Ed Balls being ushered into a Greggs to pick up eight sausage rolls (erm, it was a pasty that Osborne was talking about, he could have had the two-for-a-pound sausage roll deal on the way to work yesterday morning), proudly filmed for ITV.
It’s not exactly a PR disaster for Osborne, but it is hilarious the mileage the article has got (and yes, I do realise I’m adding to it by writing this).
Greggs has, of course, done the best on the back of the comment, racking up more followers and getting the attention from Labour. So a tip of the hat to them (and their PR agency) for riding the wave of publicity and getting the maximum coverage out of it!