Lionel Messi lights up like Amitabh Bachchan this week

 7th August 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Great PR

Lionel Messi does an Amitabh Bachchan in a lit up suit

Lionel Messi donned a suit lit up with hundreds of LED lights to promote the Adidas F 50 Messi boot. The promo, displays the ace footballer, all lit up, showing off his moves in the ultimate blingy suit:

But this is one stunt, Bollywood thought of first. Remember all those 80’s Amitabh Bachchan movies and a certain song from Yaarana? You don’t? Well take a look at the Bachchan lit up with actual light bulbs showing off his dance moves:

Bad PR

Rahul Gandhi trends in three spots on Twitter after calling poverty a state of mind

Oh dear. Looks like Rahul Gandhi has been spending too much time reading ‘The Secret’ or other such new age books, that equate poverty with a vague feeling of lack, instead of actual lack of food, clothing and shelter.

Unbelievable as it sounds; at a function in Allahabad, Rahul Gandhi said that, "Poverty is just a state of mind. It does not mean the scarcity of food, money or material things. If one possesses self-confidence, then one can overcome poverty."

Click the image below to watch India Today's headine video.

Oh well. Maybe I can acquire enough self-confidence soon to own a beamer or two or a house on Altamont Road! Maybe Rahul Gandhi needs some lessons from Prince William on how to be inoffensive and yet generate miles of PR at the same time.

Not surprisingly, after his views on poverty were made public, Rahul Gandhi was trending at no less than three different spots on Twitter, under the hashtags of #YoRahulSoDumb, #Pappu and #RahulGandhi.  #YoRahulSoDumb continued to trend for two full days. Here is a sample of some of the comments Gandhi drew on Twitter:

Sir Ravindra Jadeja ‏@SirJadeja1h

When life gives you Rahul, make it Dravid, not Gandhi #yorahulsodumb #Pappu

rajeev srinivasan ‏@RajeevSrinivasa5h

Re previous RT, 'a mind is a terrible thing to waste'. 'mind' used loosely. India's own Dan quayle #pappu puts foot in mouth. Again

Aakash Gauttam ‏@AakashGauttam1m

#Pappu said Poverty is a state of mind and by saying this he again proved his state of mind.

The organisation which issued the original press release about Gandhi’s remarks has since released a clarification, saying the remarks were misunderstood.

Black mark for BlackBox

Ah “scare pranks” – with one hand you generate excellent coverage with videos that set the internet alight, and with the other you take. Despite a whole host of scare pranks that have gone down a storm on YouTube (like this one, giving people in Brazil a life-long fear of lifts.)

LA filmmaker BlackBox TV thought it would be hilarious to try its own scare prank on unsuspecting members of the public. Taking place in an innocent looking photo booth, members of the public were invited to come on in and have their pictures taken with their loved ones. This, of course, went downhill pretty quickly – when two men in on the prank then “attacked” the booth mid-photo threatening to kill the people inside. “Oh my goodness how light-hearted and funny!” I hear you cry. Ahem.

Masked and wearing bloodied clothing while wielding an ice-pick, the two men place fencing around the booth so the “victims” couldn’t get away – and are heard shouting “Do you want to die?” repeatedly. How jovial! How funny!* (*THIS IS NOT FUNNY). Watch the prank video here :

All was made right with the world when the pranking lunatics admitted that the whole thing was just an innocent prank, but not before capturing the victims’ believed last moments on camera to share with the world. Unsurprisingly, the press haven’t taken kindly to the prank, saying that it went “too far” by making direct threats against the victims involved.

Despite getting an impressive amount of views online, the cruel prank hasn’t gone down all that well. A pretty good example of how “pranks” used for publicity purposes can go badly wrong.

Have you seen any great or even bad PR?

Write to Paarul Chand at paarul@prmoment.in or tweet @PaarulC or @PRmomentIndia throughout the week and we’ll happily credit you for your trouble.