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
Heinz, Levi’s and Gillette in creative cover-ups for World Cup
As you might expect, there’s a World Cup flavour to this month’s proceedings with some glorious marketing efforts by a host of top brands.
A personal favourite was Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone Lager, using one of the most expensive TV slots available before England’s opening game to tell a story about the graft that goes into making its product, all while giving us a laugh as Kaleb saves the day by catching a falling pint. Fans of Clarkson’s Farm will have loved this one!
Marks and Spencer (literally dressing the England squad), Nike and Addidas (both riffing on classic WC ads of yesteryear with feature length adverts), and Irn-Bru showing what Scots are made of (We’re Made in Scotland from Girders!) were other big winners.
But we’ve reserved our biggest plaudits for a host of other huge brands for their creativity in abiding by strict World Cup advertising rules which forced them to cover their logos at World Cup stadiums.
The Levi’s logo at Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco was covered tightly with a white tarpaulin and, thanks its familiar batwing shape, ended up looking like a huge pair of white boxer shorts. Meme hilarity ensued, generating a tonne of free advertising for the brand which fully embraced the joke, changing its profile picture on Instagram.
Meanwhile, the Gillette logo at Boston’s Gillette stadium was ‘covered’ in white shaving foam, again helping the brand to go viral on social media. And perhaps the best example of all was Heinz, blacking out the logos on its iconic ketchup bottles with tape, again leaving people in absolutely no doubt as to what they contained. Proof of that Holy Grail of marketing, making your brand so recognisable that even when logos are removed, people still know it instantly.
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Gone Stale
Political posturing and missteps in a turbulent Westminster month
In a month where we’ve had three Westminster by-elections, an embattled prime minister stepping aside and a new one looking likely to be installed in the coming days, there has been much political posturing – and plenty of PR lessons to boot.
We had so-called ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham travelling to Westminster to be sworn in as an MP after his Makerfield by-election victory. Keen to make a good impression and travel sustainably, he caught the train to London, only to be followed the whole way from Manchester by a Sky News helicopter. Proof that in politics, you can’t do right for doing wrong.
Mr Burnham is often praised for his authenticity and ‘man of the people’ image, but it will be interesting to see how prepared he is for the intense media scrutiny that will follow him if, indeed, he does become the next prime minister.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves also got some tough questions from the media for not attending her boss Keir Starmer’s resignation speech, despite having a leading role in his government. However, hours later Reeves stood front and centre among MPs during Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster. While this was dismissed by Reeves’s team as unremarkable, the timing has been interpreted by many as an act of political distancing. Ms Reeves has since backed Mr Burnham for PM, but will it be enough for Reeves to secure her a big cabinet job?
We also had Reform leader Nigel Farage, celebrating England’s opening World Cup win with a photo of him in the pub drinking a pint in a retro England shirt – only for sharp-eyed social media users to discover the photo used was from two years ago during Euro 2024. It led to much mockery of the Clacton MP as a ‘fake fan’ trying to capitalise on an England victory.
*Side note on the use of helicopters in broadcast media coverage – the BBC has reportedly been criticised by its own staff for using a chopper to fly over London and capture footage of Andy Burnham arriving in Westminster. According to an exclusive article on Deadline, “angry” BBC staff attempted to question director general Matt Brittin during an all staff call about the corporation’s use of the helicopter at a time when it is making significant job cuts. Another reminder about the potential negative optics of spending money while people worry about their livelihood.
