Having not blogged for a very long time - and broken my own golden rule - I was tempted back to the blogging desk by this recent nugget from Marks & Spencer, which impressively turned around a potential piece of bad PR into a good news story.

Bill Bennett had written to M&S asking for a refund after he was mistakenly charged £3.00 for a £1.90 salmon sandwich at a store in Taunton, Somerset.
Mr Bennett received a reply offering him a gift card, but a few weeks later it had still not arrived, so he wrote again – asking for a ‘hand-drawn picture of a smiley dinosaur’ to compensate ‘for the inconvenience’.

Amazingly enough, his bizarre request was granted. M&S’s Steve Jones sent a drawing of a dinosaur, along with a £5 gift voucher and a note reading: ‘Please also find a picture of a smiling dinosaur, hand drawn. Unfortunately art was never my strong point, but I hope you will appreciate it.’

Now a delighted Mr Bennett is showing off his prize on the internet, where it has gone viral – great publicity for M&S. Which just shows how, good can be salvaged when faced with potentially negative PR.

What if M&S hadn't replied? It's not likely that the story of Mr Bennett's overpriced sandwich would have made the front pages, even of his local newspaper (and, if it had, we'd be hearing the desperate scraping of barrels!) But by coming up with such a cracking response, M&S have got themselves a nice bit of coverage in, among others, the Daily Mail.

If you’d like to see the dinosaur, check out: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/viralvacuum/glance/189294/man-gets-smiley-dinosaur-sketch.glance. And if you'd like some help with PR and making the best of a bad situation, please get in touch.