A high profile PR company working for Best Buy has invited me to visit the new Thurrock store, ahead of opening day, to see how it looks and how well the staff have been trained.

Virgin has just announced that it is partnering with Best Buy to showcase digital home entertainment.
 
These people are serious about stealing customers from DSG and Comet.
 
Best Buy employs over 150,000 people worldwide (US, China, Canada, Mexico and Turkey), owns 21 per cent of the US customer electronics market and turns over $40 billion a year.
 
Thurrock opens in May followed by Hedge End (Southampton) and Merry Hill (West Midlands) in June, then Aintree near Liverpool in the following weeks and Croydon in the autumn.
 
Rather than go on the PR junket to Thurrock, I'll pay a consumer visit when the store has been open for a few weeks. But having been to a lot of very efficiently run Best Buy stores in the USA, I can safely predict that DSG and Comet are in for a tough fight.
 
Maplin may have to wake up too. The company is now much more than a Tandy-style component store but seldom if ever communicates with the press; and when I have emailed Maplin's consumer enquiries, I've had no reply.
 
The Best Buys in the US are spacious, clean and airy, but not cheap. Punters who want the lowest price will still have to buy from the web. So the competition between BB, DSG and Comet will be on making the customer feel confident.
 
Best Buy obviously knows this and is promising "bespoke in-home consultations and installations of the best in home entertainment technology, customised lighting, speaker and remote calibration and wireless solutions."
 
Best Buy’s ‘Blueshirts’ will help with in-store advice, after a nine week training course. Partner SMC will work with Best Buy’s Geek Squad to custom-install Loewe, Sony, Samsung, Bose, Harman Kardon, Pioneer, Denon, Kef and Panasonic gear.
 
There's a promise of 0% commission, so the Blueshirts and Geek Squad can in theory give impartial service. What struck me on my last visit to a Best Buy was the good selection of CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays. That's coming here too.
 
"Walk out working" is promised, with a "24-hour technology support and advice service."
 
If it all sounds too good to be true it probably is. But I can't help comparing this proactive go-get-'em approach to press relations with that "practised" by DSG and Comet.
 
Don't underestimate the importance of good PR. Adverts cost money and inevitably smell biased. Editorial comment comes free, and smells independent.

DSG's recent adverts, encouraging consumers to waste a specialist store's time and then buy from a website, stank. Best Buy's professional approach to PR could have a far more far-reaching effect that DSG and Comet yet dream.
 
Over a period of literally decades, I have many times reminded DSG's ever-changing roster of internal and external PR people of my interest.

The response is always the same; apology, promise to communicate better in the future and then back to square one silence. I can't recall ever receiving a press release from Comet.
 
Will this now magically change, I wonder? 
 
Barry Fox