Milking the media...

This summer the story of breast milk icecream ran and ran and ran. Whether it was the revelation that The Icecreamists of Covent Garden were selling icecream made with donated breast milk, or the saga of the local council taking samples and halting sales, or Lady Gaga suing to change the icecream's name (Baby Gaga...) - this story was in almost every UK national paper, most London newspapers, on the BBC, on blogs and news outlets aropund the globe. And it was all PR. The Icecreamists created a product they knew would outrage, stoke debates, engage celebrities and tick all the boxes of newsworthiness for publicity, helped by Taylor Herring PR. Inspired.

In-cider the Jacques Townhouse

This summer, cider brand Jacques opened a pop-up hotel for just nine days on the streets on London, inviting celebrities in film, music and fashion to attend and bring the name of Jacques to magazines and newspapers across the country. Here are some of the press articles the event prompted: Jaime Winstone in Glamour, Sophie-Ellis Bextor in the Observer , Hello magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Meanwhile, the blogosphere picked up on it too, passing on word of the townhouse and the cider e.g. StylePA, GirlalaMode.

Who is dumber: Internet Explorer users or the media?

As we start the new term it seems a good time to review some PR happenings of the summer... This first one is a hoax: a press release claiming that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than other browser users was picked up and reported in by the BBC, CNN, Forbes, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and many other prominent media outlets. Only when BBC readers found that the company behind the 'research' had only been trading for a month, had staff photos lifted from a French company and refused to answer calls did they begin to question whether these media should have checked their sources a little better. With the competition to fill paper and web pages as quickly as possible, standards slip, leading us to question the credibility of modern media with implications for the credibilty of PR. See teh blog 'A PR Guy's Musings' by Stuart Bruce for more.