Positive publicity in a pandemic
A cherry-picked selection of the most positive PR stories, business innovations and brand building ideas from Monday 23rd March.
Last week, I started an IG Live at midday every day sharing the top positive PR stories I've found to help share a bit of light, provide some ideas for how small businesses can promote themselves during this time and inspiration of business innovation.
Here are a few of my favourites from the live today:
1.Koru Kids - childcare services
Koru Kids will be training up medical students to provide childcare for NHS workers who need it. They are doing this for FREE, not charging a single cent, as part of our contribution to the fight against Covid-19. In conjunction with the national Helping Hands initiative, they have created a special childcare training for these students and allowing them access to the same daily planning and activities resources that they have developed for their own Koru Kids nannies.
2. Leon pivots from fast-food chain to food shop
Leon is to turn its 65 UK restaurants into shops, selling meals via both click-and-collect and delivery from Wednesday."Roughly half the meals we eat are eaten while we are at work or at school. The shutdown of restaurants has seen supermarkets forced to move from operating at 50% of capacity to 130%", according to John Vincent, the founder and chief executive of fast food chain Leon.
https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-51996773
3. Branding & design
Huge kudos to Time Out who have rebranded to Time In complete with an open letter from the editor Joe Makertich, open communication at its finest. https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/why-weve-changed-our-logo-to-time-in-for-now
McDonald's Brazil also wonderfully updated their logo, the page also updated its cover video showing the logo splitting into two and then joining back together.
The accompanying text in Portuguese reads: "Separated for a moment... to always be together."https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/hashtag/content/730626/mcdonald-s-brazil-tweaks-logo-to-practice-social-distancing/story/
4. Cat Food Cakes
With Mother's Day approaching Cat was forced to close her bakery but pushed her online cake delivery service instead and saw a 200% increase in sales. She had purchased a copy o my PR book Hype Yourself and pack of my publicity prompts the '52 PR Tips' and picked out a card that last week said contact a journalist. She did. Got herself on prime time BBC News four times yesterday which in turn generated enough sales within the hour to pay for her rent for the next two weeks. She is also included as a case study within this online article. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51995187
5. NHS support
The excellent Refinery 29 included their own roundup of top ten happy news stories. I am particularly keen on Pret. Who are offering 50% off all food and free coffee to all NHS staff.
Speaking of which, I also saw Mark Leruste talk about black cabs advertising free lifts for NHS staff. We need more of this for our frontline workers please.
6. Pages of Hackney
I love them not just because they are my local but because even when they stayed open for as long as they could they put many safety measures in that other shops could learn from. But I digress. They have converted their store to a book delivery service and according to their instagram have already competed 75 deliveries in 3.5 days. Community support at its finest. https://www.instagram.com/p/B9_YSgpH3qV/
7. Fitness industry leading the way from physical to online
Whether you are doing your PE classes with Joe Wicks, trying Barry's Bootcamp or F45 at home we are inundated with free exercise to do from our own garden. I also love the daily healing meditation at 11:11 and 3:33 from White Light Healing. The founder, who true story, used to run a club night called Slagbox and is now a shamanic healer. https://www.instagram.com/white.light.healing/
8. Facebook ad trends
What Amanda Perry doesn't know about e-commerce isn't with knowing. This is a great post about FB ad trends she is seeing in small business right now. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Ez7aAHuVf/
If you found this helpful, please help this small business continue to support small businesses by grabbing a copy of my book Hype Yourself.
Looking for more PR ideas? Treat yourself to the bestselling book Hype Yourself along with our PR card set and shop our Christmas bundle.