Hails & Fails – July 21st 2023
The Ashes series 2023 is underway at Old Trafford cricket ground in Manchester. But while the Ozzies didn’t bring the sun with them, all is sunny in PR land with some cracking campaigns to brighten your day.
This week, Bang & Olufsen revealed a weirder, wackier Spotify Wrapped, Sony created a PlayStation pasta and Atlos Tequila pretty much saved the British summer. It wasn’t a great week for Polish brand Bartex Bartol though after their mafia-themed whiskey bottle was censured by regulators.
HAILS
See yourself as sound
High-end electronics company Bang & Olufsen has created a digital platform that transforms your music playlist into an interactive 3D avatar.
Inspired by Spotify Wrapped and armed with research that shows that the music you listen to directly reflects your personality, the brand asked itself one simple question: what would your music taste look like?
To answer it, Spotify users now can link their accounts directly to the visual system to generate a groovy, dancing avatar which is downloadable and shareable in full motion! Destined to be a sensation in the coming weeks…
Please play with your food
Sony PlayStation has partnered with Pasta Garofalo to create Playstation Pasta: a range of pasta in the shape of the console’s controller buttons.
The limited-edition pasta packs are available on online supermarket Ocado now, filled with triangles, circles, squares and crosses. The aim of the game? To bring together cooking parents and their video-game loving kids.
Surely this is the tastiest collaboration ever?!
Running out of lime
When Tequila brand Atlos discovered that 2 in 3 Brits run out of limes when preparing Margartias, they knew they couldn’t just stand around like a lemon. So they created an emergency service for lime shortages – the Hot Lime helpline.
Unorganised margarita makers can simply call the helpline to receive a fresh fruit delivery straight to their door.
Having laughed our heads off at the PSA video for the service, we might just forget limes at our next team social…
FAILS
Mafia-themed Scotch whiskey… just why?
UK retailers have been asked by regulators to stop placing orders for a Sicilian mafia-themed Scotch whiskey. Need we say more…
Polish firm Bartex Bartol has been found to have breached rules over its “Cosa Nostra” product with packaging that was likely to cause “series and widespread offence” in the context of “rising gun crime in the UK”.
The product’s bottle which is shaped like a Thompson submachine gun was found to create a direct link between the drink and a dangerous weapon. Text on the packaging even reads “after the battle, comes the reward” in polish. Yikes.
Want more information? Contact us here