PR: Turning a negative into a positive

The ‘selfie bench’ is now a thing. Last month a local council managed to turn a pretty fundamental foul-up into a massive publicity generator. Fans of the popular seafront at Porthcawl were left flummoxed when the Council installed two benches facing toward the road rather than toward the scenic ocean view. One of the reasons given was apparently to give people weary of the ocean view ‘another option’ but later someone had the crazy/inspired idea to rebrand the bench as a “selfie bench”. While this further enraged some Porthcawl residents, the idea began to gain momentum, with several people posting selfies from the bench.

So what is the lesson? Whether you agree with the idea or not the fact is that the Council has managed to produce positive coverage out of an initially negative story and is trying to appeal (wrongly or rightly) to a contemporary generation and expand their audience. Whether this means that the town will be inundated by surges of selfie-taking teens remains to be seen, but the story has generated coverage in all the major nationals. The hashtag #SelfieBench has also been used prolifically on social media, with other opportunists using it to promote their own agendas. For a sleepy seaside town on the edge of the Welsh coast, this has turned into quite a cost-effective way to put your name on the map and create a buzz out of a pretty minor event.

In our industry, sometimes it’s best to respond directly to negative publicity, such as responding as soon as possible to any customer complaints on social media, while other times it is best to try and resolve the situation quietly without drawing more attention to it. The “selfie bench” also tells us, however, that a negative story can be turned into a positive. Looking to a specific example from the technology industry, Google was recently criticised for not paying musical artists enough for showing their work on YouTube, despite earning a sizeable amount of advertising revenue through the videos. A spokesperson responded well by highlighting that its “ad-supported business…allows artists and labels to monetize the 80% music listeners who historically have never paid for music.” A good counterargument and one which positions the company as a champion of, rather than an exploiter of, musical talent.

Whatever you think of Bridgend Council or Google, these examples show us that, if done the right way, turning a negative into a positive can generate a lot of publicity, diffuse some tension and make your company come out in a much better light.