Cadbury Bournville and #Fekuexpress win this week’s great PR

 14th August 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Cadbury Bournville converts #NotSoSweet tweets into funny videos

Cadbury Bournville is well known for its not so sweet positioning for chocolate.  Remember the annoyingly bubbly girl who gets eaten by a large plant? Now, the India office of Cadbury Bournville has come up with an interesting campaign, where you could tweet about all the things in life that really get under your skin and they convert those into funny videos.

Take a look at the Cadbury TV commercial about the irritating friend.

The Cadbury Bournville Commercial

Here is one about a pet peeve of mine, the over enthusiastic fellow student. And yes, they turn into your colleagues later!

Cadbury Bournville video tweet on the over enthusiastic fellow student

And my favourite, the holding hands anniversary!

Cadbury Bournville agrees that one year anniversaries of holding hands are plain silly!

The idea of content out of Tweets is not new. Pepsi India did it rather well with  #PepsiIPLLiveArt  which invited fans to send in witty tweets, the best were converted into posters which were also displayed during the telecast of the recent season of IPL matches.

Cadbury Bournville takes this a step further by actually creating videos.

As per Social Samosa in a 10 hour activity on Twitter, Cadbury Bournville managed to grow its follower count by 130.

#Fekuexpress arrives with some great PR

Last week we put Rahul Gandhi remarks on politics on the mat. This week, the Congress party steals a march on BJP with a clever social media strategy. A week, clearly, is a long time in politics. So far, Congress supporters have not been that successful at beating the Modi machine at the social media game. Till this week.

Beginning last Sunday and trending through the early part of the week, the hashtag #FekuExpress was trending on Twitter. A clever mix of #Feku or a person who tells tall tales and Chennai Express, the latest Bollywood blockbuster, Congress supporters used the term #FekuExpress to create a microsite featuring a cartoon of Modi atop a train.

The microsite then invites people to predict the lies that will be repeated by Modi and win two tickets to Chennai Express if they are correct.

A very innovative political PR campaign that succeeded in taking away a fair amount of the thunder from Narendra Modi’s big speech in Hyderabad on 11th August. Will this actually translate into votes on the ground? Probably not. At the very least it managed to hit out at Modi in front of an audience that is widely said to support him and is very active on Twitter: the urban middle class. It also created miles of coverage in every major media organization.

I have one question though and disclaimer, I am not a fan of either feku or pappu. But given our hypersensitive official approach to social media laws, would section 66 A of the IT Act  apply to Fekuexpress.com. Or does that only apply to college girls and cartoonists .

Breaking Bad is good for local business

Breaking Bad, the gripping serial about a dying chemistry teacher who turns to making meth to earn quick money has just premiered in India.  You would think what PR is possible from such a dark theme? Well, as per People magazine, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city, which is the home of the hit show Breaking Bad, local businesses are cashing in on the show's methamphetamine theme with everything from candy to donuts to bath salts.

While the Rebel Donut shop has come with their bestselling item Blue Sky Donuts, Great Face and Body, is selling blue bath salts that mimic the blue colour of the meth.

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.