As it is the season to be jolly, for our final blog post of the year we’ve decided to take a more light-hearted look at the PR stories that we’ve covered during the last 12 months with our festive roundup of five fun PR favourites from 2012.

Top totty beer ban makes mouth-watering PR

Back in February, a small independent brewery found itself at the centre of media attention when its award-winning Top Totty beer was banned from the Strangers’ Bar in the House of Commons on the grounds that its name was offensive to women.

But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the small family business behind the beer – Slater’s Brewery, which is based in Stafford – as sales of the voluptuous blonde ale went through the roof on the back of widespread publicity.

One shell of a way to crab media attention

Where would our festive five be without masters of prize publicity Lego, who stole the limelight yet again with an attention-grabbing new attraction at its Legoland theme park just in time for the first bank holiday of the year?

The Danish toy manufacturer made newspaper headlines just as the Easter bank holiday weekend was approaching when it introduced to the world Harry the hermit crab, which had taken up residence in a specially constructed Lego shell at the park’s Discovery Area and aquarium.

OMG: What an advertisement for PR!

How could anyone in marketing forget the story earlier this year about a hilarious Craigslist ad, which used every copywriting trick in the book to make an antiquated secondhand 1995 Pontiac AM GT, complete with blown head gasket, look like the most desirable car on the planet?

Not only was the advertisement the work of pure marketing genius, going on to be a worldwide internet sensation, but it was also one of the funniest examples of advertising copy we’d ever seen.

Farcical fresco restoration a PR masterpiece

Few will also forget the headlines during the summer about an 80-year-old woman’s botched attempt at restoring a 19th century fresco, depicting Christ in a crown of thorns, at a small Roman Catholic church in northern Spain.

As a result of widespread international news coverage, the small town of Borja became an overnight tourist sensation, as thousands flocked to its infamous new attraction to catch a glimpse of the most appalling artwork restoration you could ever imagine.

#IceIceSurrey the hottest PR tweet

Finally, season’s greetings go out to Surrey Police for this cheeky little PR number, in which it posted a series of humorous tweets about the icy road conditions earlier in December – all written in the rapping style of 1990s one-hit wonder Vanilla Ice.

Surrey Police showed us all that putting a comical spin on what is regarded as a serious message about road safety really can make a positive impact. Not only did the public sit up and take notice, but they retweeted the jocular weather warnings in their thousands.