Google and CNN-IBN’s Google Hangout interviews are the PR winners this week

 3rd April 2014    Good and Bad PR 
 Paarul Chand

Good PR

Google ties up with CNN-IBN to bring series of political interviews on Google Hangouts

Google India has come up with an interesting way of leveraging Google Hangouts during Election 2014.

CNN-IBN has kicked off a series of interviews with key political leaders called “In Conversation”, using the Google Hangouts feature. The first of the interviews was with Arun Jaitley on March 25^th. Coming up over the week are Omar Abdullah, Anna Hazare and Sharad Pawar.

Great use of interactive, live and real time content co-creation. Election 2014 is the first election to take place under the full glare and power of the social media. 149 million new voters could cast their vote for the first time and about four out of every 10 young voters are from internet savvy urban Indians.

Traditional media definitely cannot afford to ignore tapping into the social media tools to connect with this vibrant new audience. Win win for both CNN-IBN and Google.

Home Shop 18 scores with #MakesMeHappy hashtag

It’s a simple, yet ever engaging question. What makes you happy?

In a campaign that went viral within 24 hours, Home Shop 18 asked people what #MakeMeHappy.

According to social samosa, this resulted in an “outreach of 23 million users across social media, trending for over 24 hours across India and engaged a total outreach of 8,16,532 on  Facebook, 6,36,540 on Twitter and 2,40,000 on Instagram.

Checkout their “What makes me Happy” jingle here: 

Bad PR 

YSR Congress accused of distributing fake notes for bribing votes in municipal polls

That voters are sometimes paid to cast their vote for a particular party is not a new story. But that the cash for votes are made up of fake notes or phased out currency is certainly new.

Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress has been accused of distributing fake or phased out currency to voters in the Krishna and Anantapur districts.  Municipal polls took place in these districts as well as across Seemandhra and Telengana last week.

While the party has denied the allegation, the Election Commission has launched a probe into the issue.

Want to know the going price for a vote? According to the Financial Express it's Rs. 2,500!

Have you seen any good and 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.