In a similar vein to the previous post, Sneak has to take his hat off to the supreme spin doctors employed by Dixons. Take one bad-news story: customers will no longer be able to buy a new VHS video recorder from Dixons, because it doesn't make enough profit selling them. So if your old machine is on the blink and you still want to watch your wedding, little Timmy's first steps, or your painstakingly-collected back-catalogue of Star Trek: The Next Generation, then tough luck: it's eBay or the highway. (Or, to be less dramatic, you could try Amazon or Argos or John Lewis or almost any other electrical retailer). But put the cold facts into the PR blender and spin for 30 seconds and Dixons can serve its callous decision piping-hot as a plus point. It can secure prime-time free advertising for its line of DVD machines at high-profile news outlets like The Guardian, BBC, The Independent and Reuters. A PR job well and truly done, Sneak feels.

23 Nov 2004