Tucked away at the back of Europe’s 11th biggest theme park is an interesting little bit of CSR/PR.

A little context for international readers: Alton Towers is a theme park built in the grounds of a fine country estate — all of the rollercoasters, thrills, tattoos, fried food and sugar highs that you might expect from a theme park,  with none of the boring old heritage you might expect from a stately home. My kid felt left out that he was the only one without tattoos or orange fake tan, but otherwise thought he was in heaven, and that’s enough for me.

Anyway — CSR. There’s a ride called the Peugeot Driving School, in which five-to-10 year olds get to whizz around a track marked out with junctions, pedestrian crossings etc in little electric Peugeots. The pretext is: practice your mirror-signal-manoeuvre, have fun obeying traffic lights, etc.

The subtext is: Peugeot is all about safety and responsible driving, and we’re investing in children.

It’s conceptually pure rubbish as CSR when you unpick it — of course, the kids treat it like Dodgems and smash the hell out of each other as fast as possible, having a great time in the process (mine did at least, that’s the one in the red car with the evil grin). They learn is how fun it is to drive like a lunatic screaming at people. I can’t believe it will sink in deep enough to transfer to real-life driving behavior in a decade’s time — which is fortunate for the road users of 2020, unfortunate for the credibility of this CSR exercise as any more than PR.

BUT, the point is, most people won’t unpick it. Somthing about the Peugeot brand will stick in the minds of 3.1 million visitors a year — fun yet safe, responsible, child-friendly.

And that’s why — even if it’s crap CSR — it’s good PR.

Nice piece ^[1] from the BBC magazine on “the greatest PR stunt ever”. Also nice to see mainstream media covering the PR industry with a little grudging respect instead of the usual “dark arts”.