Examples. Well, some of the examples is coming up a big wins for big brands with big bucks. You too can have a successful PR campaign on a smaller scale budget, but still hit the mark. One of the campaigns I worked on previously was around the onboarding of social workers from a government body, which they no longer wants to fund to exist an independent regulator. The social workers that were on the government funded register, were not at all happy, has they had to pay more money to be registered with this independent regulator. I also felt that they didn't fit in with all the other professions.

They are already regulated. I was actually heading up part time, I put together a strategy which included an array of activities, including identifying key major food freshmen and providing them with content about the numerator. Reasons why The social workers did fit in and laying out all the benefits of moving to this independent regulator. I also came up with ideas around having tweet chats with social workers to help stamp out any fears and concerns, you know, head on. We also attended events where social workers frequented and held our own events as well, which, you know, spent time explaining the process and the differences that were between the different regulators, again, looking at the benefits as well. So, you know, and that went really, really well.

The campaign was a success, and we had over 85,000 social worker professionals transfer to the new independent regulator. Yes, they were still a bit grumble about the feet, because understandably, it stood money, bit more money than the others then they were used to pay it. But by the end of that they had a much better understand of the new regulations. Which was the end goal, and they felt a little bit more warm towards it. So that was a good win win in that sense. Another smaller campaign I worked on was for a client, which is a German fitness equipment store that actually bought out one of the UK longest standard equipment suppliers.

And it was an acquisition. So as you can imagine, with an acquisition, there is lots going on as potential Fallout, what will happen to come in, please, will just be lost, whose doors be closed, what plants the new owners have they from another country this mean they're gonna, you know, just bring in their own staff. There's lots and lots of fears that come up. So I can't stress chief the announcement, which included obviously your the q&a side of run acquisition so that we were prepared for the media queries, particularly around staffing and Fallout and redundancies and things like that, you know, as well as making sure that in turn That the employees at the firm that was being taken over, were actually fully briefed. There's nothing worse than having an employee read about an imagined story before, you know, they've been actually briefed. So that was something else.

But the announcement went down really, really well. You know, I secured coverage for us and BBC, and all the outlets where they are because they were based in Scotland. So all the local newspapers in Scotland and had it and we're covering it, and it was covered in a favorable way, because we were able to deal with it head on and plan effectively. Now, this Charity Campaign, the F word is a very, very kind of cool example. Now, not all campaigns are warm and fluffy. This is an extreme way of getting attention for calls, but you know, it actually really worked.

I mean, how many people do you know that walk past charity workers on a daily basis I've been guilty of this myself and I rush heading off to meeting someone that's got, you know, their banner and they're saying good for this and that charity and I'm in a rush and I've thought I'll do it my way back. But this video highlights how angry people became when confronting for sandwich board that I said, EFF the poll, yet haven't bothered or, or unconcerned they seem to be when they were walking past the same man. We're in a board that said help the poor is a very extreme example. But you get the message loud and clear. And, you know, this type of campaign with lends itself well to social media platforms. Can I give you some info on it, sir.

It's like a leaflet, leaflet, guys. Anybody how you take a leaflet by the pool. That's a leaflet. Make the call for backup Disgusting what what are the things you do a job if you ain't or place the reason for that you should be thinking of a better way to get them off the street guys hold on they're gonna give them a blanket. Notice for two years you got no fucking, I don't respect that at all. But before anyone got any spare change, folks, help the boss.

Help the poor please folks. And that's a crazy example is Carlsberg ad. So the campaign if Carlsberg did a couple of years ago As part of that, if Carlsberg did campaign, so they had put up a 12 meter wide billboard that dispense free beer. How cool is that? It was on the side of the old Truman brewery in Shoreditch. So well place and it was ice cold beer was made available on top, from around one to 7pm in the evening.

And so you can imagine how popular that would have been. It's fair to say that he went down for a while and was a hit on social media. They also did this as part of the campaign. Watch this A few more nicer campaigns, what does bad PR or not so good PR look like now we know PR can go wrong. A good example is the recent Southern train strike. You know they wanted to get people on board and put an article in the metro last year 2017 which is obviously a free newspaper For the UK with a hashtag for support to us, but the hashtag instead ended up being used by commuters to rate the strike.

So again, this is why I say timing is very key to what announcement you've got going on. If you've got disgruntled customers and clients, then don't go around saying how great those services because more than likely you're going to get quite a bit of a backlash. You know, it's all about dealing with the issues head on. And obviously, you know, making sure that you you put out the right information and very honest information, you can't promote your service but be aware that there can be a fallout. Another well known blunder would be Volkswagen. Volkswagen, so the car manufacturer Volkswagen had a big PR blunder a couple years ago.

They had claimed that their vehicles were environmentally friendly. However, it transpired that they had actually installed software that detected when cars were being tested and change performance temporarily to reduce emissions. Yep, the Environmental Protection Agency called folks back in, which led to an embarrassing confession and a substantial recall. The President and the chief executive of Volkswagen Group of America did eventually admit the firm had screwed up and been and been dishonest by, you know, using software to cheat emission of testing and destroy the atmosphere. It was reported 11 million cars worldwide contain the shady software and the CEO actually had to resign in disgrace. Not a good way to impress customers.

Most recently, in 2017, you've got United Airlines had a number of issues. You know from Bruce Lee dragging up a seated passenger off an overbooked flight so they could accommodate their staff. They have a death of a giant showbiz rabbit and somehow managed to allow a passenger who was flying to Paris to end up in San Francisco. So all these stories went viral, was cut by news outlets were out wide. And I know I wasn't the only one that was in a state of shock when the footage you know, captured on the smartphone, or the doctor passenger being dragged off the flight. They bloodied face what other passengers looked on in horror.

You know, no surprise doctor is suing them and rightfully so the way the situation was handled the situation the way the situation was handled, but from the PR perspective was terrible. How do you as a cc CEO, end up referring to the passenger as disruptive and belligerent, doesn't leave many wants to travel with them again. Hopefully the air miles are linked to another airline But people always say all publicity is good, right? Wrong as a professional in a business that has had to manage crisis communications on behalf of clients. I don't agree with that statement that all publicity is good. There are lots of examples to illustrate how bad publicity has hurt brands clearly demonstrating that there is such a thing as bad press.

Whilst whilst These examples are of large firms with the rise of social media, a small mistake made by a small company can become a viral sensation for the wrong reasons. The good news is that companies can and do recover from media crisis with sound pure advice, but if they're not carefully handled, the result is serious reputational damage.