At PPR, we love a good joke and we love PR – making last month, April, a fantastic month for our campaign round up! April Fool’s Day saw some great campaigns that made us do a double take but as always, there were some during the month that made us look again for the wrong reasons…
With that in mind, here’s a look at the good and bad PR campaigns that caught both our, and the UK medias, attention throughout April!
Mob Kitchen announce they are joining OnlyFans
In the most unlikely crossover, the ‘food you’ll actually cook’ team at Mob Kitchen announced they’re joining OnlyFans! Promising ‘sweet and spicy content’, the Instagram announcement was a clever play on the ‘food porn’ genre that the internet loves so much. It was well received in the comments, with a load of laughing faces and some people saying they would actually subscribe! Too bad it was all an April Fool’s stunt… a clever and funny one at that, driving great social media engagement.
Rylan Clark becomes the new voice of Amazon Alexa
For one day only – April Fool’s, of course – Rylan Clark took over the virtual assistant voice to give us Rylexa! When users gave the command ‘Alexa, good morning’, instead of being met by the usual robotic Alexa voice, they were greeted with Rylan’s cheerful tone saying ‘Morning gorgeous, its Rylan and guess what, I’m here to say I’m the hot new voice of Alexa today!’
The internet absolutely loved this one, and we can’t blame them! Surely no one would say no to a ‘Morning gorgeous!’ greeting on the regular.
There's a new voice in town, and their name is….Rylexa? 🤔 We can work on the name @Rylan . 😘
Have a go today by saying "Alexa, Hello" or “Alexa, what’s your name?” #Rylexa pic.twitter.com/YrZ6ElHkxN
— Amazon.co.uk (@AmazonUK) April 1, 2022
Elon Musk buys Twitter
If you haven’t heard the news that billionaire Elon Musk has recently purchased one of the biggest social media platforms, where have you been?! This announcement has received mixed comments, with some criticising Twitter for selling to one of the richest men in the world. Others, however, have been loving the change, with Elon’s tweets on the subject receiving *literally* millions of likes! A good PR day for Elon, but an interesting one for Twitter. We’re intrigued to see how this one develops and the changes it may bring to the social media platform..
Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.
Is Twitter dying? https://t.co/lj9rRXfDHE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2022
P&O’s boozy staff
The last couple of months have been a bit of a PR nightmare for P&O, and unfortunately April was no exception. After making hundreds of staff redundant to rehire new staff for reduced labour costs, seven members of the new group of staff were themselves dismissed for breaching the no alcohol policy. We don’t need to explain the irony here, but it’s safe to say that this is another knot in the string of bad publicity for P&O.
IKEA chocolate bunny flatpacks for Easter
Ending on a positive note, we have to mention IKEA for cleverly combining everyone’s love of their easy-to-assemble furniture with their love of chocolate! The self-assembly milk chocolate bunnies were a huge hit with shoppers, and could only be bought in-store which encouraged people to visit to grab one for themselves (as if we needed another excuse to visit IKEA!). Super cute and super tasty – we’ll chalk that up to a win for IKEA.
Calling all our flat-pack fans – why not try our VÅRKÄNSLA chocolate bunny as a sweet alternative to Easter eggs this year? Even better, it’s made using only certified cacao from sustainable sources. How fast can you put yours together? *participating stores only. pic.twitter.com/tOkOQEF40q
— IKEA UK (@IKEAUK) March 4, 2019
For more interesting articles from us check out these posts:
- Why it’s important to secure coverage for your product
- How to pitch to journalists
- The best and worst PR campaigns of 2022 so far
At Prohibition, we work with a range of brands across all sectors, B2B and B2C, to create innovative PR campaigns that deliver real ROI and help meet business goals. Get in touch with us today to find out how we could support you with your Public Relations. Drop us an email: hello@prohibitionpr.co.uk or give us a bell on 0113 430 4160.
About The Author
