Emma's picks of today's Good and Bad PR...
Good PR
ASDA has taken impressive steps in the attempt to tackle alcohol misuse in the UK, by introducing a minimum payment for alcohol into all of its stores.
The new policy will set a floor price of duty plus VAT on over 99% of its alcoholic range, meaning that the minimum price for a pack of 20 5% beers will now be £8.95. Drinkers will also now also have to pay a minimum of £10.49 for a litre- bottle of vodka. ASDA executives plan to encourage the government to enforce the same policy within supermarkets nation-wide, asking for a ‘Responsibility Agreement’ to be put into place.
A fantastic move from ASDA, and sure to give them a lot of credibility when it comes to responsible selling. Let's just hope the Lambrini girls don't get too annoyed if it hikes up the price of a classic bottle of cherry fizz- after all, they just want to have (cheap) fun.
Bad PR
Today’s bad PR goes to social media guru MySpace, who has experienced a 49% loss in its audience in the past 12 months.
The figures were reported by ComScore, who discovered that MySpace users dropped from 6.5million to 3.3 million from May 2009- 2010. Bad news for the social media forerunner, which at its peak enjoyed regular visits from over 100 million registered users worldwide. The decline has been put down to the meteoric rise of rival site Facebook; who last month announced an audience of 500 million registered users. This all comes despite a desperate bid by the site this year to attract visitors by ‘revamping’ its content; focussing more on music and entertainment.
Poor old MySpace; top of the ‘cool’ ladder just a few years ago, only to fall off with a bang when Facebook came along. Perhaps a re-think of communications functionality and content, and a move away from the ‘music focus;’ will help attract visitors back.
