Louis Philippe’s new content channel, The Label, is the PR winner

 16th July 2014    Good and Bad PR 
 Paarul Chand

After Unilever’s now iconic Kan Khajura Tesan – an idea now copied by Facebook for their advertisers – other consumer brands are also creating their own channels of communication.

Apparel maker Louis Philippe, has launched its own e-lifestyle magazine, called ‘The Label’.

The magazine is packed with toys boys like, gizmos, cars, travel and fashion tips, complete with its own Twitter handle @TheLabelbyLP and Facebook page.

Content marketing via owned media offers the advantages of interactive and informal direct channels of communication. Louis Philippe is an early mover in this space.

Absolut India makes limited edition bottle featuring crowd sourced design 

Liquor marketing in India is tough as the law does not allow advertising of liquor or tobacco. To get around this challenge, the makers of Absolut vodka have decided to launch a limited edition bottle that will represent the “spirit” of India.

The bottle will sport a design selected through a crowd sourced competition through July and August.

This is part of the vodka maker’s campaign to bring limited edition bottles to cities around the world. After the campaign started in 2007 in the US with limited edition bottles for cities such as New Orleans, Boston and Brooklyn, it’s now India’s turn to get its own limited edition bottle.

The Hindu’s latest round of resignations attracts bad press

After the round of resignations at Network 18, ‘The Hindu’ has also attracted bad press as two senior journalists – Praveen Swami and the iconic P. Sainath – quit this week.

Last year, Kasturi and Sons, the owners of ‘The Hindu’, changed the running of the newspaper that was preceded by the resignation of the then editor Siddharth Varadarajan.

The latest round of resignations has raised doubts about how journalists are being treated under the new structure.

Praveen Swami told Best Media Info that, “It began to feel a little bit like working for Pol Pot, and I didn’t want to hang around until I was executed or sent off for re-education”.

DNA's dropping of story on Amit Shah riles the public

It really makes no sense to drop a hard hitting story today as DNA newspaper has found out. An opinion piece  titled,  'A new low in Indian politics' by journalist Rana Ayyub, was taken down by DNA from its website, presumably for being too critical of  the new BJP President Amit Shah.

The action had the opposite effect, as both mainstream media and social media protested against the removal of the article.

The original article can now be read at the author’s blog.

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.