Category: News

Snow news is good news

07-Jan-10 11:45

You could have spent weeks planning for a major campaign launch, but as soon as the first snow flakes start to fall there is really only one story in town.
Perhaps it's something to do with the British obsession with the weather, but the media can't get enough of the white stuff, pretty much at the expense of anything else.
Bristol saw its share of snow and disruption on Wednesday and in the response the Evening Post is running several pages of pictures and reports on how people have been coping with conditions.And buried among all the traffic and weather reports there will be a healthy dose of PR making the best of an opportunity that has literally fallen in their laps.

Newsdesks across the country will have spent all day looking for stories of heroism, human interest and examples of the old blitz spirit. And the PR industry will have reacted on cue providing stories of courage in the face of adversity or simply using the snow as the hook for publicity. In The Sun today, for example, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has managed to get in on the act by claiming the snow could cost the economy £1 billion and put many small businesses at risk.

On a more light-hearted note a UK-based extra-marital dating site, Illicitencounters.com, is claiming that it saw an unexpected increase in visitors with most new members registering from areas worst hit by extreme weather, including Hampshire, Berkshire, and the West Country.

As well as the snow, anything animal-related is always sure to get coverage as well so the PR team at London Zoo must be delighted with today's coverage of the annual head count of all their creatures great and small, ‘despite the freezing conditions', says the Guardian.

Of course it can also be a potential PR nightmare for those caught in the eye of the snow storm, such as transport companies and grit suppliers. Through no fault of their own they find themselves to blame for the weather and the fact that people are snowed in and unable to get to work. Every story has a villain and unfortunately it's often those who work tirelessly most of the time to keep the place going that are the easy target.

It must be a case of crisis management for a few of the beleaguered press officers trying to broadcast clear messages during a day of ever-changing circumstances such as we had on Wednesday in Bristol. In the end the head of comms for First Bus in Bristol went on to a message board of the Evening Post website to counter the criticism head-on and was clearly exasperated at some of the comments from people who had clearly not got the message.

 

Simon