If you haven’t heard about Rentokil’s fantastically sensationalist PR story about cockroaches on public transport, then you can read my overview here or Ben Goldacre’s overview here. This article is about how badly they dealt with the negative PR storm in its wake.

So you write a press release about a new bug killing technology you’ve developed, send it out to a few journos and then follow it up with some specific figures about the number of cockroaches on train carriages. You present the figures as being real, actual figures about the number of actual cockroaches you found on an actual train (they were not) and this is printed as fact. Then a relatively well known debunker of bad science tweets you asking to see the figures from your study. Knowing full well that your figures are a massive over-estimation reached by the most absurd model and not actually ‘real’ figures at all, you ignore him.

Unfortunately, the relatively well known debunker is Dr. Ben Goldacre who has 30,000 followers on twitter. So Rentokil, I thought I’d give you a few pointers.

Lesson 1 – What do you do when you have created an outrageously sensationalist PR story, presented over-inflated pretend figures, produced from the most unlikely model known to man, told everyone they are real figures collected from a real field study and then someone famous for attacking such behaviour with religious zeal who has 30,000 dedicated followers, a Guardian column and No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling book called Bad Science challenges them?

A: Don’t ignore them. They will not go away. They will re-tweet and re-tweet and re-tweet, making sure as many people as possible know what you have done and that you are ignoring him. Those people will then re-tweet it to others who have never heard of Ben, but are damned sure to be following him now. Don’t believe me? Look here.

Lesson 2: What do yo dou when a famous investigative journalist, broadcaster and author criticises you in front of an audience of 30,000 people (likely more – by this point, Dave Gorman and Neil Gaiman are re-tweeting, who collectively have over 1.5 million followers. EPIC FAIL) and you eventually get around to responding to him a day later and but haven’t actually given him the specific information he asked for?

A: Well, first of all don’t tweet this

Good Morning @bengoldacre, I hear that @Rentokil UK’s PR Agency got back to you. Sorry it took so long; corp wheels can turn slowly!

Are you kidding? You blame ‘corp wheels’ for taking an age to get back to him, when you haven’t even told him anything at all?! Fail.

Don’t pretend the issue is happily resolved when you know full well you haven’t answered his question but in fact have fobbed him off. This = more bad PR. Perhaps it would even have been prudent to make note of the fact that said journalist had in fact been tweeting for the last 12 hours about the fact you still hadn’t answered his questions and had fobbed him off.

Rentokil posted this apology on their website at 7.43pm on Friday 12^th March, 29 hours and hundreds of posts after Ben’s first tweet. That’s 29 hours of real time, continuous bad PR to a very large audience. Google ‘Rentokil’ now and a lot of that bad PR is on the first page.

Social Media can be a really useful tool in brand management; it’s a great way to engage with your market and manage your brand image in real time. If a negative message about your company is spreading like wildfire across twitter do not take 29 hours to respond to it. Do it immediately and less tweets will be made, the story hopefully goes away quicker and you limit the damage. Instead potentially millions of people across the world saw the whole exchange and it was so sensational Ben used it as his Guardian column on Saturday 13^th Match (Saturday Guardian readership is over 350,000 people. Oops).

Part of brand management is owning up when you’ve done something hideous and mitigating the inevitable damage, not putting your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes, saying “LALALALA – I CAN’T HEAR YOU” and hoping it goes away (besides, when you did eventually own up you still withheld an awful lot of information – read the comments on the press release. Very funny.) News stories don’t end up as chip shop paper anymore; they are filed by Google forever to appear in searches for you. Chances are we’ll all do it at some point and after writing this the fates will probably move to make me fall far from my high horse in punishment, so lets hope I at least have the sense to take my own advice!

I think we can all agree that this was an epic social media fail, but what makes it a Super Massive Epic Fail? Well, it’s this. Cockroach-gate unfortunately brought immediate attention to Rentokil’s appalling social media strategy, which they decided to post online (FAIL so hard I fell off my chair); in which they not only outline their ‘strategy’ of employing worst-practice methods of social media PR (like Twitter spamming), they also acknowledge that some people find this rude and intrusive and are (rightly) angry about it. They go on to state that those people are wrong to feel that way and that their course of action is a good one (even though people have left comments explaining that this goes against twitter’s code of practice and is BAD PR!). It’s not so good if you’re annoying the market genius. This combination is why I am awarding you the prize for The Most Epic and Awesome Social Media Fail in the History of the World, Ever.

So guys, with the fates duly tempted watch this space for an embarrassing social media fail of my own to (hopefully) honestly own up to.

You have to feel a little bit sorry for Rentokil. The tenacity with which Ben Goldacre (quite rightly) went after them was really something to behold (and I urge you read the whole #tagged exchange here).

If you’ve never heard of Ben Goldacre, then allow me to explain. He is the author of the blog and Guardian column ‘Bad Science’ and the book of the same name published by us, here at 4^th Estate. He is a medical doctor who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks.

Vitamin pill magnate Matthias Rath sued both Ben and the Guardian after Ben raised serious concerns over Mr. Rath’s practice of taking out adverts denouncing Aids drugs in South Africa, while at the same time promoting his own pills. Mr. Rath eventually dropped his case.

Ben was also part of the campaign to stop Gillian McKeith from using the title ‘Dr’ and constantly questioned her methods, results and ‘scientific’ claims about her products.

The short version is that if you’re peddling bad science, then on Dr. Ben Goldacre’s radar is the last place you want to be.

So enter Rentokil, the multi-million pound pest control company who press released a rather alarming (or should that be alarmist?) story about the number of cockroaches and other nasties inhabiting London’s buses and train carriages.

1000 cockroaches on the average train carriage? 1000? No wonder this raised Ben’s quizzical brow  – I mean, I know I keep my head in my book and music on loud when I get on the train but I’m fairly sure even in my early morning, bleary eyed state that I would notice 1000 cockroaches sharing my morning tube ride.

Now, any critical reader of a daily newspaper who notices a story about pest levels on public transport that has been commissioned by a pest control company may well raise an eyebrow, look around their tube carriage and correctly assume that the article is sensationalist nonsense, but that is not the point. Here is a quote from Rentokil as published in The Evening Standard:

People eat on the move, and there is a lot of food left on seats. Pests are thriving. Although we looked at a train not running in London, we believe that London trains, both underground and overground, will have a similar number of infestations.

The bus we studied was within the M25, and we are already in talks with bus and Tube operators about a new cleaning system we’ve developed, which heats the vehicles to kill the insects, and their eggs.

The problem is that this article also quotes specific figures and, as shown above, states that these figures were reached through actual study and sample collection from real life trains and buses. We know it’s nonsense. We have our own empirical evidence of this by virtue of taking public transport and having, you know, eyes. So what exactly is the problem? Well, as Ben rightly outlines in all his work, if you use scientific language and hint at real scientific methods being used – like a field study on, say, a tube carriage, to collect actual data –  and use that information to reach a conclusion in this way, when we know you’re lying, how can we ever trust scientists? How can we believe them when we know that ‘scientific evidence’ is really just a fancy way of saying ‘something I made up because it suited my cause’ (which in this case was what? I could say what I think, but I fear it would be libellous).

This behaviour allows people to pick and choose the evidence they want to believe, or that helps them achieve their aim – be that a scaremongering story in an evening tabloid, or a boost to your vitamin pill sales. If the public have no faith in the scientific community, then it is easier for you to turn the tides against that community and sell Joe Public your ‘alternative’.

After a long, drawn out campaign on twitter and some tenacious questioning from Ben, Rentokil relented and issued this statement.

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Today, Fourth Estate publishes the paperback edition of 2009’s most talked about and contentious novel.

Is it Art or Porn? You decide.

Watch the videos, read the chapter, tell us your thoughts.

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Rosie’s Deli has become an intimate and eclectic place where food, music and friends from all over the world tumble into one place on Electric Avenue There’s not really another café like it; it’s tiny, welcoming, warm and fantastic.

During some time out from the Café, Rosie decided to write a cook book, and I for one and glad she did! There are recipes for a hangover (often useful to me), dishes for dates (lets not talk about that) and soulful suppers to comfort and soothe (I refer you to the last parentheses). For me, this is a great cook book because it’s all about food that depends on who you are with and how you are feeling (and what’s in fridge — another important factor in my cooking escapades); all of which makes preparing a great meal that fits the moment easy and fun.

Rosie’s not a chef, she’s a damn good cook who knows her stuff and how to make a meal that lifts the spirits. Well, I’m sort of bound to say all of this really aren’t I? — seeing as work for her publisher and all — but I challenge you to look at this fantastic recipe for quail’s egg and pancetta tart and not fall in love with Rosie. Don’t be put off by the ingredients — it’s about as easy as making a bacon and egg sandwich! Take a look at the video to see what to do.

Better yet, of course, would be the chance to pack the ‘little darlings’ off to grandma’s house and retreat to a spa with a good book in hand. So just to be extra specially nice this cold and windy March, here at Fifth Estate we’re giving you the chance to win a one-night break at a Champney’s Health Spa.

This gift-giving frivolity has been inspired by Observer and Telegraph columnist Cristina Odone: Cristina’s novel follows working-mum Harriet, her husband and their kids, as they struggle to make ends meet (and the arrival of a wealthy and single ex-boyfriend throws a bit of a spanner into the works too).

To enter, all you have to do is follow this link to Mumsnet.com — another bunch of nice people dedicated to helping you deal with those smaller and more troublesome members of the household — and fill in their form.

Best of luck!