What have Brexit, Donald Trump and Pokémon Go got in common?

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last six weeks, it’s been almost impossible to avoid the news, with every other news story being about Brexit, Donald Trump and er ….Pokémon Go.  From a PR perspective, all three have been interesting to observe even if the results have been mixed, to say the least!

Brexit – While the Leave campaign won the PR battle when it came to votes, ever since 23 June the whole issue of Brexit has become a PR minefield akin to an episode of the Thick of IT. We’ve had political backstabbing, backtracking, gaffes and more than a month on there are still more questions than answers.

Donald Trump – Love him or loathe him Donald Trump is a publicity machine, whether it is his tweets or latest unfortunate comment. In many respects, he is the personification of style over substance and is a great case study of the dangers of an out of control spokesperson.

Pokémon Go – No we haven’t stepped back in time, Pokémon is back and is taking the world by storm. It is certainly difficult to remember a game or app that has garnered so much media attention in recent times.  It is not to say that all the publicity has been positive as there have a lot of column inches devoted to service outages and Pokémon Go related crime amongst other things.

What the above does show is that being able to get your message (positive or in the case of Donald Trump, negative) in front of target audiences, tell a good story and subsequent ability to answer difficult questions remains key to the long-term success of any PR campaign.  If 2016 has taught us anything – expect the unexpected!