The Co-operative's junk and Newcy Brown's bollocks - the week in PR

Ouch x2: Moodys has said it thinks the bank may need a bail out. Now hang on, this is taking them into Northern Rock territory, i.e. pictures of customers queuing around the block to get their money out. There is no way to manage this from a PR point of view, it is tin-hat o’clock if this happens.

It will be interesting to see if Osborne or one of his team has to give a briefing to stave off a run on the Co-op vaults.

Ouch x3 for the PR team over at Co-operative when the planned announcement of Barry Tootell leaving had to be brought forward a week because of Moodys getting moody with them.

It is a good move by the bank to try and get all the bad news out on one day and minimise the story dragging out. Being honest, with this happening on a Friday, the story is likely to die over the weekend, unless those queuing pictures materialize.

Now, I am going to deviate away from the world of corporate PR and into the quicksand-esque world of social media.

I was going through the Facebook Studio award winners yesterday and whilst the campaigns are all “worldies” and very glam, I could not help but notice that there was a real lack of “commercial” brands in the winner’s circle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the high-end profile campaigns (Nike, Heineken, Orio etc) that have won, all the usual suspects but none of those campaigns would see the light of day for a really commercial ROI driven brand. Ps, for a giggle, go watch the judging video, straight out of Shoreditch.

There is one winner that stands out though, shining, beacon-esque amongst its peers: the Newcastle Brown “Bollocks” campaign. I love how they mock the social media “guru” advice and just concentrated on the funnies.

This is probably the only campaign that I think would see the light of day outside of a FTSE 100 company.

Going forward, maybe the new Co-op head shed should adopt this campaign.

Finally, let’s celebrate the fact that the UK never actually had a double dip recession. Well, according to the ONS who have revised upwards its figures from 2012.

This is one of the odd quirks of how recessions and growth rates are calculated and more importantly, how they are revised some times afterwards and the situation was not always as bleak as was thought.

This tells me that the ONS and Treasury Department need a PR person at the heart of their decision making process, never again would we have a recession, in fact, it would be free white wine spritzers all round.

Berate me for my lack of social understanding (and show off your hipster outfit at the same time) via The Twitter @10Yetis