Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Online PR: Woolworths' Relaunch

Good to see that Woolworths is now a fully fledged etailer.   Six months after it disappeared from the high street, it has been recreated online, by Littlewoods-owned Shop Direct and comes packed with all the product goodies you could expect – including its famous pick’n’mix, sweets selection.

20,000 people signed up to the new site within hours of its launch, so it has plenty of fans.

Can't imagine buying pic 'n' mix online. Perhaps it should be renamed 'click 'n' mix'?

Online PR Mess-Ups

Econsultancy have published some good examples of online PR catastrophes.

Good one from Ryanair.  After a blogger spotted an error in the airline's online booking process, staff from the airline left several insulting comments in response to the post. To make matters worse, the episode was publicised around the web.  Then to really rile the online community, the company issued a statement staying that its policy was "not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers"

Interesting that a company specialising in low cost, high volume business activity doesn't see the benefits of engaging with low cost, high volume methods of communication.