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2011 has been an interesting year in PR. With the media industry in the midst of a crisis of ethics and inquiries and social media opening up communications to the world and their dog to break news, break down stories and go public with their own take on things it has been a difficult – but interesting – time to be thinking about what makes for good PR.

The Orchard team have come up with our three highlights for 2011, showing what is good, bad, and frankly quite weird in the world of PR this year.

First of all, let’s look at the ‘good’. Steve and Cat both suggested the Royal Wedding, which as well as being a good old fashioned knees up for much of the country, was a lesson in absolutely impeccable media and public relations. According to Steve (who knows a thing or two about dealing with Royals) “Paddy Harverson, the director of communications at Clarence House, has done an amazing job in managing the profile of The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall since 2004. The Royal Wedding this year of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a PR masterpiece, combining tradition and ceremony with modern popular touches – and a nice classic car!”

Not everyone had such a good year though, and our resident Aussie Emma had to bring up the ‘pyjama disaster’ at Qantas. As Emma says, if you want an example of bad PR from 2011 “it has to be the Qantas debacle.” She goes on: “Launching a social media campaign a week after the airline grounded its fleet was mind-boggling. Qantas asked users to use the hashtag #QantasLuxury to describe what their “dream luxury inflight experience” would be. Angry and sarcastic Twitter posts flooded Twitter. It was the wrong campaign to be launching at a time when there was an on-going industrial relations dispute with its workers. Lessons should be learned – this was a great example of the power of social media and why PR should not be done in isolation from the rest of the business.”

And finally… No year would be complete without a range of baffling PR stunts gaining coverage despite all norms of taste and decency. While we liked the giant slipper our pick of the year goes to ‘Baby Gaga’, an ice-cream made from human breast milk.

As Harry explains: “Baby Gaga was one of the most out-there stunts of the year. The ice-cream, made from human breast milk, managed to create a number of international headlines for the ice-cream shop in Covent Garden that launched it. It stayed in the news for several days, and caused a lot of controversy even though Westminster Council was reported to have confiscated it amid concerns over safety.

So there you have it: a royal wedding, airline pyjamas and human breast milk ice-cream. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that PR work isn’t varied.

Posted by Chris.