The Tesco Clubcard was surely one of the greatest marketing ideas of all time. Launched in 1996, the loyalty card now has some 10 million subscribers and spawned a multitude of copycats.

A clever PR stunt put the Clubcard back in the news yesterday. According to the Daily Mail, some more astute shoppers have noticed that the value of Clubcard points earned on a purchase is sometimes more than the cost of the purchase itself. As a result, one person went and bought himself 10,148 ready meals. They cost him £6,596, but earned him £20,296 worth of points. Even after paying for a van to take the meals to a homeless shelter, that's still a nice little earner.

Other people don't quite seem to have got the hang of it. Another shopper bought 924lbs of bananas (which I calculate is a staggering 2500 of them) in order to make a profit of, wait for it, £24.64.

Great PR story in the Daily Mail this morning: a survey which quantified just how little interaction British people have with their neighbours. 6 out of ten of us don't even know the names of our neighbours. Only 10% of us would greet a neighbour warmly in the street, or stop for a neighbourly chat. And only a handful of us would lend a valuable object such as a vacuum or a cake mixer to a neighbour.

I think the company that commissioned this survey (Linden Homes) has highlighted a very important issue that is directly responsible for many of the social ills we face in this country. So it seems a bit small-minded for the journalist who wrote the story not to give them (Linden Homes, that is) any credit for it in the newspaper itself. OK, so they have corrected their mistake and mentioned Linden Homes in the online version, but that's a poor consolation prize (for Linden Homes).

Being written out of the story is, of course, the biggest hazard of the PR profession. I've never quite understood why some journalists seem so hell-bent on not giving credit where credit is due. Sure, there's a responsibility not to fill newspapers with one-sided PR propaganda. But giving Linden Homes some editorial credit for having commissioned the survey doesn't by any stretch of the imagination suggest that the Daily Mail thinks a Linden Homes house won't fall down under the weight of furniture, the moment you move in. So why on earth not mention Linden Homes?

A rhetorical question, I guess, unless the editor of the Daily Mail happens to stumble upon this blog.

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It's been a little while since my last late night fumble in the back of a taxi, so I might be a bit out of touch with this one. But surely I can't be the only person that thinks that the product sampling scheme by Trojan condoms is doomed to failure.

The company has just announced that it's giving Sussex's taxi drivers 60,000 free condoms to hand out to their passengers on request.

Now I don't know about you, but I always found it embarrassing enough buying the things from a chemist. But asking some overweight, leery taxi driver for one, thereby sharing with him or her the intimate details of how I plan to spend at least a minute of my time later that evening? You must be joking.

In my day (which wasn't so long ago), there was also the problem that going home in a taxi with a girl didn't mean she was a 'dead cert'. In fact, leaning forward and asking the taxi driver for a condom would probably have killed whatever chance I had in the first place.

At least Trojan has had the good sense to restrict the offer to their Shared Pleasure condom, thereby eliminating the possibility of: 'Would sir like a Twisted Pleasure, an Extended Pleasure, a Magnum, or perhaps a little Mint Tingle?'

All the same, I can't see many takers for this generous offer, except perhaps the taxi drivers themselves. But that's the beauty of it. I don't imagine the employees of Radio Cabs will get through more than half a dozen samples on their own, which means the overall cost to Trojan of the media coverage generated by this exceptionally clever PR stunt will be somewhere around £4.49

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Probably the single biggest bit of good luck I've ever had was to be handed responsibility for managing the public relations for a flea treatment within weeks of starting my first job at an agency, about nine years ago. In PR terms, fleas are a wonderful species to work with. There are all sorts of fascinating things people don't know about fleas. Did you know, for example that the male flea sports an organ approximately 2.5 times the length of its own body - the largest, relative to its size, of any insect. Fleas also have an advantage in that they always elicit a reaction. They're a talking point. That's more than can usually be said about, say, an old brand of washing powder. And last but not least, the very word 'flea' lends itself to all manner of cheap headline-friendly puns.

So it was perhaps unsurprising that within weeks of starting the job, I had a major coup on my hands with the announcement of the winner of the 'Flea For All Draw' - a competition in which we offered £1000 to the person who sent us the rarest species of flea found on a pet cat or dog. OK, it did help that the winner looked like she'd stepped straight off the set of Baywatch, but the resultant headlines: 'I'm off on a fleabie', and 'Two's company, flea's a crowd' support my argument about the value of a headline-friendly subject.

My flea days are over now, and my time is entirely taken up representing a couple of long-term clients, and running this site. But if I was looking for a new public relations client, I'd be gunning for a car insurance company. Look no further than last Friday's Daily Mail for the reason why. On page 7, news from AA Insurance that its survey found growing numbers of older women are going topless (as in driving a convertible car, rather than the less palatable alternative). And on page 25, news from Norwich Union that flip-flops are the most dangerous item of footwear for driving in.

The moral of the story (aside from the fact that there are very few things in life more dangerous than an old woman driving topless in flip-flops), is that if you're looking for a job in PR with a guarantee of success, ring a car insurer. Doesn't seem to matter whether the idea is a genuinely good one (like the AA survey), or a case of stating the plainly bloody obvious, you'll get the coverage.

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