‘All PR is good PR’

On BBC Breakfast News this morning they were taking about companies jumping on the World Cup bandwagon to increase sales and someone (from the market research industry, I think) said ‘all PR is good PR’. Can that be true and in this instance, what do people mean by PR?

Possibly when people hear the expression ‘PR’ they think of some sort of pro-active, often gimmicky idea which somehow plugs a brand. It is hard to think of an instance when pro-actively placed PR could be described as bad PR, with the possible exception of damage limitation response stuff and even then it’s questionable.

The intriguing thing about this statement is that it is saying that all PR efforts are positive – if only we could get more people to use it!