Who could forget the incident of Microsoft PR agency sending off the spokesperson briefing document to the journalist instead of the client by accident? Don’t worry, we have an Indian version of it as well. Ok what about that one about the YouTube video of rats in a Taco Bell?

Shel Holtz has picked out the PR and marketing gaffes from the newly launched Money magazine’s annual ‘101 Dumbest Moments in Business’ list. Check them out. Quite a few lessons to be learnt from our global PR counterparts’ misadventures:

#8—A YouTube video of rats frolicking in a New York Taco Bell gets millions of views.

#16—Microsoft PR agency Waggener Edstrom sends a 12-page dossier on a Wired contributing editor to the Wired contributing editor. The less-than-flattering dossier, calling the editor “tricky” and “sensational,” was meant to go to Microsoft executives.

#17—Redux is warned by the FDA to rename its energy drink, which was called Cocaine. It was renamed to Censored, then NoName.

#21—The Cartoon Network hires a marketing agency to place electronic lightboards promoting its characters. In Boston, they’re mistaken for bombs, creating a crisis.

#36—Best Buy is sued by the Connecticut attorney general over its in-store, kiosk-based intranet, which employees reportedly used to display prices higher than those advertised on the external website.

Read more about 9 others at Shel Holtz’s blog.

I wonder where arts this recent one. The perils of copy pasting blindly.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

Good news for the bikers. Titan Industries’ sub brand Fastrack has launched a new line of new biker accessories including its Bikers range of eye gear, and the ‘no hands’ Neon disc range of watches.

No. That’s not what the main focus of this post is about.

What is more interesting here for a marketing professional is the way they have launched it. Apart from the ad campaign on TV featuring John Abraham, they have embarked on leveraging the social media, making Fastrack one of the few companies in India to take the lead on embracing PR 2.0.

Fastrack has come out with the Fastrack social media news room for bloggers. They are using the newsroom to share information and news on Fastrack. It also features social media press releases (Bikers and Neon Disk), Flickr streams of Fastrack gears, social bookmarking buttons, videos, media coverage, product and company information, spokesperson profile, RSS feeds, and more.

For the consumers, Fastrack has launched two Facebook groups called Life on Fastrack and Bikers on the Fastrack, which have 121 and 71 members already, as on yesterday. Quite good I must say that the groups have attracted so many people in such a short time.

By the way, check out the Fastrack main site - not the usual corporate stiffness but an attractive and very consumer-oriented featuring contests, fun stuff, opinion polls among others. They plan to follow up with a Twitter part as well.

It’s good to see corporates in India waking up to the new web 2.0 oriented media space of today, otherwise many corporates outside the IT vertical usually do not have a clue about the whole peer-to-peer thingy or have some vague misconception about it. On the Indian watch industry, Fastrack has taken a lead on this front with this and it will be interesting to see how much benefit they are able to derive out of it. Will be good to follow this campaign and review in say six months again.

Corporates globally have been using the social media, read these corporate blogging case studies, to benefit for their businesses. There have been small organisations that have used the social media as a cost-effective way of competing their rivals with huge marketing communication budgets. In India, only a few seem to have gone on this route. Fastrack’s initiative is a good start that will encourage others to follow.

Disclaimer: Titan/ Fastrack is not my client. The opnion here is from a social media watcher’s perspective and do not represent my agency’s or employers’.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india PR 2.0

Check this story out - an adoration of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and how PR agencies could learn from him. Well, the guy is amazing and there’s nothing to say bad. But when he’s that famous, the media would lap it up even if he’s cleaning his nose.

I wonder about the journalist who actually wrote a story like this. Must be a devoted fan. He wrote…

PR agencies should take a tip or two from Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan on how to turn the charm on the media. The suave and sharp Shah Rukh, who has also been blessed with the gift of the gab, subtly bailed out a high-profile PR agency that was managing an event for Pepsi, the cola giant, on Sunday.

The Pepsi train ferried Shah Rukh, his Don co-star Priyanka Chopra, journalists and others from Delhi to Jaipur for the India-England match.

When some members of the camera-toting brigade refused to budge after they had had their fill of shots of King Khan and Priyanka at a press conference, the already hyper media manager of the PR company became even more edgy.

‘Aap ne apna vaada tod diya (you have broken your promise),’ she shrieked into the mike time and again. “Bhaisahab mere saath co-operate kariye (co-operate with me),’ she pleaded.

But the camera-toting brigade, who were perched on chairs, refused to ‘cooperate’ because she was behaving like a ’schoolteacher’.

Shah Rukh patiently watched her struggle for a few minutes and then took the mike. ‘I am sorry if you are being inconvenienced,’ he told the reporters. ‘But I think it is mostly because of your own selves,’ he chuckled. He had driven home the point most charmingly and no one seemed to object…..

Some lessons in media relations, or just a whole load of Bollywood-starved Delhi media? I wonder what Genesis BM has to say.
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, India Public Relations, India PR,

I picked up this news from the Yahoo PRPoint group. Apparently Ogilvy and Mather in Mumbai had run into a bit rough weather over a promo campiagn it conducted among some journalists.

The New Indian Express reported that a leading Public Relations agency based in Mumbai is drawing flak for creating a scare among lady journalists in Chennai by conducting a novel promotional event for a new television programme. The agency, Ogilvy and Mather, sent certificates to women journalists announcing that their names had been changed and registered.

Even as the addressees were wondering about the certificate, the agency sent them mysterious gifts along with snapshots of a male model with some romantic letters and a bill for $100. The novel theme, however, misfired.

A couple of harassed journalists from this website’s newspaper and The Economic Times lodged a complaint with Greater Chennai Police Commissioner Letika Saran about the receipt of the mystery parcels last week.

Immediately, the matter was investigated and the origin of the mystery parcels was traced to Ogilvy and Mather in Mumbai. The agency claimed that the exercise was part of a promo for a new programme ‘Vicky Vedal’ slated to be telecast in Disney channel.

Officials with Oglivy said that they had selected 1,000 people working in leading media organisations and sent letters announcing that their names had been changed.

The change of name certificate enclosed with the letter gave a new surname to the addressee. In one case surname of a lady journalist was ‘changed’ into Roshan and a new website ‘MyNameIsRoshan.com’ was created by the agency. The parcel arrived within a few days of receiving the letter. The parcel also contained a bill for 100 dollars routed through nbay.com.

The officials said the idea was to unravel the mystery by making a group of guitarists play at the doorstep of the company and announce that the whole thing was all for fun.

A senior police officer told this website’s newspaper, ‘They have violated the law and duplicated registration seals. The case is still under investigation.’

Meanwhile, officials from Ogilvy and Mather approached City Police Commissioner Letika Saran and apologised. They also said, ‘We have not received any complaints from any part of the country so far.’ However, the agency claimed that they had intimated senior officials about the mystery parcels sent to one of their staff and also got permission from courier service. The police warned the agency not to indulge in such promotional activities.

There is also a news item on this in Mumbai Mirror.

Well, I’m no legal expert and can’t comment on whether any law has been broken or not. But apart from that, I wonder why people can’t take some things easy. Talk about the media having a laugh at the expenses of unwary people in programmes like Bakra and Chhupa Rustam. If you go about complaining to the police, Cyrus Broacha would have hung up his boots long time back at MTV. The media can bribe people in the name of sting operations. But now, when the tables are tuned, they freaked.

All I can say to Ogilvy and Mather is that it was a good idea and would have worked well as a good media relations exercise while doing the promo campaign for your client. The only bummer was the target media list. You chose some wrong people. Cheer up guys.
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, India Public Relations, India PR,

Check out this story on the Union Home Ministry of India setting up a National Police University that will offer graduate, post graduate and PhD courses to civilians and serving police officers in a range of subjects and pertinent issues like forensic science, biological warfare, criminal psychology, public relations, human rights, insurgency, communal tension and man management. Notice that ‘Public Relations’ is part of the course.

To me it implies that the government is realising the importance of public relations. It is initiatives and media stories like this that actually uplift the Indian PR industry and do some ‘PR’ for the industry.
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India,

Wanna read about some PR people speak on the current Coke and Pepsi crisis? Check out this news story in International Herald Tribune. Oh!Don’t forget our last post on this.

Some extracts…
…In some ways, Coke’s and Pepsi’s immediate response came out right of crisis management text books. As soon as the Center for Science and the Environment announced that drinks manufactured by the two companies in India contained on average more than 24 times the safe limits of pesticides, both companies knew they were headed for trouble. They formed committees in India and the United States, working in parallel on legal and public relations issues. They worked around the clock fashioning rebuttals They commissioned their own laboratories conduct tests and opted to wait until the results came through before commenting in detail.

This approach quickly backfired: their reticence merely fanned consumer suspicion. They became bogged down in the technicalities of the allegations, instead of focusing on winning back the emotional support of the their customers.

“They got behind the curve and now they are chasing the crisis,” said Richard Levick, president and chief executive of Levick Strategic Communications, which is based in the United States and which specializes in advising businesses in this kind of crisis.

“We have some way to go to restore consumer confidence in our brands,” said Kari Bjorhus, Coca-Cola’s communications director.

Rajeev Bakshi, who heads Pepsi in India, agreed that there was much work to be done. “Has our side of the story got across to the consumer yet?” he said. “Not really. I am concerned about that.”

…But Coke and Pepsi should have known better, said Suhel Seth, a leading public relations expert in India and an adviser to Coca-Cola India. “Fringe politicians will continue to be publicly hostile to big Western companies, regardless of how eager they are for their investment,” he said. “Large multinational corporations are still seen by pockets of consumers and opinion makers as marauders and not as contributors.”

Levick, the American public relations consultant, agreed. “They underestimated their own importance,” he said. “Much more than companies, they are symbols of the West. They don’t realize how powerful that is.”

“In the U.S. and the West there is a certain dignity to silence, said Seth, the Indian public relations expert . “But here people interpret silence as guilt. You have to roll up your sleeves and get into a street fight. Coke and Pepsi didn’t understand that.”

The companies also failed to realize how fast news travels in modern India,

“We are living in a new, very aware India,” said Amit Agnihotri, a public relations analyst in Delhi. “We have 36 news channels. People are interested in what is happening around them. Coke and Pepsi haven’t understood the power of this new India. They tried to wish this problem away, by ignoring it, by not responding to it. That won’t work any more.”

Coca-Cola also decided to go on the attack, though indirectly. Coke officials from in Delhi gave detailed briefings during which they questioned the scientific credentials of their accusers. They directed reporters to blogs containing large quantities of uniformly pro-Coke entries and handed out the cellphone number for the director of an organization called the Center for Sanity and Balance in Public Life. Public relations experts said this approach was unwise.

“Crisis abhors a vacuum,” Levick said. “They needed to show leadership. These minimalist statements were not adequate.” …
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, Pepsi, Coke, CSE,

Is the Indian government obsessed with banning every sort of media vehicles, whether it be films, websites, or blogs? Now it is the Arab TV channels. Arab News reported -

In a country widely referred to as the world’s largest democracy, the Indian government has succumbed to mounting Israeli pressure and ordered a nationwide ban on the broadcast of Arab television channels.

The Indian government’s ban on Arab television stations is in complete contrast to the friendship that Arab countries imagine exists with their neighbour across the Arabian Sea. It seems the ban is a move to ensure that Indians do not get to see the atrocities that are presently being committed by Israel in Lebanon and the occupied territories.

Minister of Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi was busy in Parliament and was unavailable for comment on the issue. However, a ministry official explained why the Indian government decided to enforce the ban. The official highlighted that India enjoys close and cordial relations with Israel and the US more than any of the Arab governments.

According to another source within the government, the ban is a clear sign to all governments in the Middle East that the Israeli, American and British governments carry far more influence in India than any of the Arab governments. Several senior Indian journalists explained that the ban was an indication that India had succumbed to Israeli pressure rather than American.

As a communications professional, I wonder what is it that makes the government feel banning the media from time to time is the only solution. Banning does not sound like good information management. Just imagine you are in the middle of a debate and you suddenly go hit your opponent down to keep him quiet. What does it say about you?
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, Arab, Media,

It’s PR crisis again for Pepsi and Coke. Centre for Science and Environment’s press conference yesterday had all national newspapers today (85 news hits on Google search and counting) screaming that the cola giants have presence of pesticides in their drinks, as according to the research organisation’s latest study.

Seems like Genesis and Perfect Relations now really need to pull up their sleeves high. The crisis is looming with Indian MPs already asking for the ban of these soft drinks.

This is not the first time the cola giants got themselves into the pesticide imbroglio. In 2003, CSE’s study had came out with similiar results, which sparked off such a public outcry that Coke had to open its biggest crisis communications bottle, hired Perfect Relations to help improve its image, and even got down its Asia head of communications from Hong Kong to India. Also, considering its already shaky image over causing groundwater pollution and water scarcity in many places, it’s not going to be an easy way out. The public might not be so forgiving second time round that their favourite soft drink makers put pesticides in their drinks and they didn’t care to change in three years.
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, Pepsi, Coke, CSE,

Check out this Hindustan Times story today that talks about the Haryana government hiring Concept Communications Limited (CCL).

The company selected after a year-long scrutiny, will be paid Rs 4.5 lakh a month for a year. It will work in tandem with the state officials. The Director of Public Relations said 11 firms had applied for the Haryana account. A committee headed by chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda shortlisted the firm after presentations on “Brand Haryana” Haryana government’s brief to the company was to improve and develop the state as a brand, nationally and internationally. The company has launched a survey in the state and is talking to people at the grassroots level. The firm would be handling Haryana account with its team of 20 people deployed at Chandigarh and Delhi. The company, CCL, started functioning from July.

So congrats to Ravi and others at CCL. Wonder what they offered in their plan though.
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, Open Source PR,

Seems like AIIMS never had enough of making headlines. First it was the medical students’ strike, then its report defying Apollo in the Rahul Mahajan drug case. Now it is the AIIMS PRO, Arti Vij, who has been caught in the middle of a crossfire between the hospital and the government, with major media houses writing about the altercation between Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, and the AIIMS Director, P Venugopal.

Hindustan Times reports - The trouble began after DS Moorthy, Officer on Special Duty to the Minister, sought the replacement of the AIIMS public relations officer, sub-dean and senior financial advisor, as well as action against its medical superintendent without taking Venugopal into confidence. Terming the move as undue and intentional, the faculty said it was an attempt to undermine the prestige and dignity of AIIMS. The faculty demanded Ramadoss’ removal from the post of President of the institute.

According to the report, Ramadoss has alleged that the hospital administration has become ineffective. I wonder if it was the way the hospital administration handled the recent medical students’ strike, and the way it had supplied masala to the media for weeks, causing unrest to the government.

Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, India Public Relations, India PR, Marketing, Client Servicing, Media Relations, India Resource, Open Source PR, AIIMS,