Cadbury Bournville fakes ‘not so sweet marriage proposal’ in this weeks Great PR

 11th September 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Close on the heels of its campaign where audience’s tweeted about what really annoyed them and the tweets were then converted into videos for YouTube, Cadbury Bournville has come up with another interesting marketing stunt that takes the ‘not so sweet’ positioning of Cadbury forward.

Here’s the stunt. In a city mall, a young man publicly pours out sweet nothings and proposes marriage to his girlfriend, only to have his head bashed by a ukulele played by a conveniently placed music troupe. The reason? His girlfriend found his proposal too sweet to stomach.

Watch the hilarious video (which was apparently deliberately posted from a random account) below:

The Cadbury Bournville message plays on a toy train that chugs in, but is so well woven in that the attention remains on the actors playing out the stunt.

The story even made it to The Daily Mail, which said that the stunt was shot in a Dubai mall with an Indian teen. The campaign was actually developed for India by Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai.

Insensitive PR

Modi’s Jaipur rally gives rise to controversy over dress code for participants

Controversy broke out over Narendra Modi’s rally in Jaipur, Rajasthan mid-week, over reported distribution of specific clothes to the Muslim community to wear at the rally.

According to the Indian Express: “sources in the BJP revealed that the party had bought 5,000 skull caps and burqas each two days before the event to be distributed to Muslims attending the rally.”

While the BJP has denied this saying that there was no directive for a dress code, but just a clarification that people are free to wear burqas if they wanted and they would not be asked to take it off for a security search.

Congress General Secretary, Digvijay Singh was quick to jump in and “asked if BJP was trying to enforce a “dress code” or playing “vote bank politics” .”

Given Modi’s poor human rights track record in Gujarat, a picture of him addressing a rally of Muslims would make an impact, but the controversy generated shows quite clearly how such superficial and insensitive PR gestures bereft of real attempts to build ties can only end in generating criticism.

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.