Hails & Fails – June 23rd 2023
It’s been a week where we’ve struggled to get past interest rate increases, new railway worker strikes and the COVID fall-out. But there have been some brilliant PR campaigns to distract us from the news agenda’s doom and gloom.
Supermarket Iceland gave air fryer fans a real treat, bookie Paddy Power had a cheeky solution for protestors and streaming giants Netflix blurred the lines between fiction and reality.
A bad week for Great Western Railway though after its misty-eyed TV completely missed the mark due to cancelled trains.
HAILS
Introducing the air fryer aisle
The UK’s first supermarket aisle entirely dedicated to products that can be cooked in an air fryer has been unveiled by supermarket Iceland.
The aisle has packs of everything from Greggs’ sausage rolls and steak bakes to Aunt Bessie’s roast chicken crowns, cod fillets and other family favourites that can be cooked in the popular new kitchen must-have.
Sales of air fryers have boomed during the cost of living crisis because they offer more efficient, cheaper and quicker cooking to conventional ovens and grills.
Contemporary and creative – Bravo Iceland.
Paddy Power launches a hot air balloon for protestors
Paddy Power has cheekily launched a new initiative to deal with protestors threatening to disrupt sporting matches – offering to ‘raise their profile’ by sending them up in hot air balloons.
Sporting events have been targeted by individuals from groups like Just Stop Oil over the last year – spraying an orange powder at the World Snooker Championships and targeting the Twickenham rugby final between Sale Sharks and Saracens last month.
But Paddy Power says it has a ready-made summer solution – launching a campaign called Pants to Protestors and unveiling a giant hot air balloon in the shape of a green pair of underwear. They say they have set up P.E.S.T – a Protestor Exit Support Team – in order to help save British sport this summer.
Hilarious – and tonnes of coverage too.
Netflix launches Streamberry from ‘Black Mirror’ for real
When an episode of “Black Mirror” went viral for poking fun at Netflix, the streaming giant decided to join in on the joke.
And this week it launched two websites based on “Streamberry,” the fake streaming service from the satirical anthology series.
Launching Streamberry.tv, an exact copy of the fictional platform that features characters from the show, Netflix also launched youareawful.com, where users can upload their own photos to become the subject of a Streamberry show.
The parody streaming service looks exactly like Netflix, including the same user interface and the classic “Tudum” intro noise.
And they’ve mopped up column inches everywhere this week.
FAILS
GWR launches misty-eyed TV ad as railway workers announce new industrial action
Timing is everything, isn’t it?
And, unfortunately, for Great Western Railway, they couldn’t have got it more wrong with their latest TV advert.
In the same week that railway workers announced a new batch of strikes and commuters everywhere are complaining about the stress of train journeys, GWR re-launched its 2020 advert series featuring The Famous Five.
The ad – ironically called ‘Five Get There First’ – harks back to a time when travelling by train was stress and worry-free.
The campaign is the fourth to feature the Famous Five but, unfortunately, calm, stress-free train journeys are not an experience many train commuters recognise right now, are they?
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