Is Oli Beale's six-page letter of complaint giving Virgin Atlantic good PR?

Some have suggested WCRS creative Oli Beale's six-page rant about the quality of food he experienced on a Virgin Atlantic flight is a clever stunt.

The letter prompted Richard Branson to call Beale personally, leading to acres of press coverage. Brand Republic has heard that the letter is in fact real, but is it generating positive PR for the Virgin brand, as some have argued?

This story got heavy coverage on the BBC 10 o'clock news last night, for God's sake. They ran big chunks of the new "Still Red Hot" spot, too. But I think Virgin are coming out of this smelling of roses, not bhaji custard.

 Well, at least his food was dead.  Our daughter had a maggot in her chicken on the same flight back from mumbai in July, and after much complaining she got a voucher for 75 quid.  A month later our filght from Mumbai was cancelled, and we were moved onto the BA flight with no apology or explanation.  Branson should stop smiling and fix the problem!

 

C

I voted 'No', but only because I didn't want it to be. Of course it's brilliant PR and kudos to the well-oiled (or should that be Oli'd) machine that 'managed' it. As to our gullible/complicit 'news' media with 24/7 to fill and no skateboarding turtles to hand... what a load of... Next they'll be buying that planes can make the stratosphere smell of Bounty bars 'cos they run on coconuts, as that what the press release says. Oh... they have? Ah well.

 I read the letter, and I chuckled at it. Was it good PR? well I passed it directly onto three friends, and told a host of other people about it. I also posted a link to it on Facebook but discovered people were already ahead of me. So it's definitely getting the coverage, what Virgin need to do to change it from 'just pr' to positive PR is to respond in a similar style. I'm sure they've got the flip charts out as we speak!

 Not fix the problem of serving poor food prepared in unhygenic conditions then?