Our monthly PR winners and Losers review spotlights those who have pulled off a fresh PR masterstroke, and those whose efforts have fallen short.
Staying Fresh
Amazon shows UK financial contribution to counter ‘tax dodger’ narrative
An effective piece of comms from Amazon leads this month’s review with the retail behemoth issuing an update on how much tax it paid in the UK in 2025.
Amazon has been criticised in the past for using tax breaks and loopholes to aggressively reduce its UK tax bill. Despite recording billions in UK sales, the company paid no UK corporation tax in 2021 and 2022 after benefitting from the government’s ‘super-deduction’ tax breaks.
However, the company used its recent update to reveal it paid more than £1.3bn in direct UK taxes in 2025, contributed more than £6.5bn in total taxes and had a £40bn UK investment plan.
Yes, some of this higher tax bill was a result of having to pay higher National Insurance contributions, but using its data on tax, investment and jobs was clever way to change the narrative and answer a longstanding reputational vulnerability head on.
John Lewis ‘signs’ Lenell John-Lewis to front summer of football campaign
Shout out to John Lewis for using a humorous and well-known lower league football chant as the inspiration for a clever viral advert ahead of this summer’s football World Cup.
The retailer partnered with Boston United footballer Lenell John-Lewis who has long had supporters singing “his name is a shop” to him from the stands. The chant has followed the 37-year-old striker throughout his career at clubs including Grimsby Town, Lincoln City and York City.
Now he’s fronting this playful campaign to promote the department store’s television sets with research from John Lewis (the retailer not the player) suggesting more than half of viewers will watch this summer’s World Cup fixtures at home due to later kick-off times.
It used paid partnerships with publications like LADbible to generate awareness and the story was also covered by the BBC.
Gone Stale
Standard Chartered CEO apologises for “lower-value human capital” remarks
Next up is a lesson for all business leaders on their choice of language when it comes to the people that work for them.
Bill Winters, the chief executive of banking and financial services giant Standard Chartered, apologised in May after referring to thousands of staff set to lose their jobs to AI as “lower-value human capital”.
Mr Winters made the comments as he was laying out the bank’s plans to cut around 7,800 back office roles, primarily in response to AI. He later clarified his remarks on LinkedIn, making a second clarification on the platform when his first attempt failed to dampen the initial backlash.
I do have a modicum of sympathy here for Mr Winters. He was attempting to make an important point about the need to reskill the workforce because of what AI can now achieve – something that is becoming a major challenge of our time. However, in doing so he slipped into clumsy business speak, using words that gave the impression he didn’t care.
The response to the language shows how leaders need to be hyper aware of how the words they use can be misinterpreted and, in some instances, weaponised by those with an opposing agenda.
Southampton FC slow to put supporters at heart of Spygate response
The football spying saga that engulfed the end of Southampton’s footballing season has rightly left the club’s supporters angry and frustrated. For those not of a footballing persuasion, the club pleaded guilty to spying on the training sessions of several of their opponents (something that’s against league rules) including Middlesbrough who they were to play in a Championship play-off semi-final.
While the club had to keep early responses to the league’s charges factual and respecting of a legal progress, subsequent statements about the incident became dominated by arguments about the punishment being disproportionate to the club’s breach of the rules.
While a club statement on May 20 did include an apology to fans, a Southampton fan advisory board has condemned the club for not keeping them informed and not speaking with fans directly.
From a reputation management point of view, the fans seem to have been treated as an audience member rather than the club’s most important stakeholder. The club now has to build bridges with supporters and also show its responding in the right way from a governance perspective too.
