Maybelline India outsources kisses for a song and watch out for drones dropping beer

 9th May 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Pucker up with Maybelline New York India’s crowd-sourced Kiss Song
 

In case some of you out there are suffering from IPL cabin fever, here’s an innovative PR stunt to distract you.

Maybelline New York India has launched a crowd sourced song to publicise ‘Baby Lips’ balm.

Made up of over 6000 ‘crowd-sourced kisses’ sent by fans, the song is led by newbie starlet Alia Bhatt.

A great way to stand out in the IPL stories choked market, just don’t expect any great music though. Even the nasal toned Himesh Reshammiya will sound positively legendary in comparison. Take a look:

Chris Gayle drives traffic awareness in Chandigarh
 

If there is anyone that has great PR going for him at the moment, it is Chris Gayle. Short of making him President, Indians are quite ready to issue Indian citizenship to the star cricketer after he reached the fastest century in 30 balls during a match against Pune Warriors India during IPL 2013.

Now Chandigarh police has roped him in to create awareness about traffic rules in the city. A video is also in the offing with Gayle. This is not the first time that sportsmen in cricket-mad India have been used to create traffic awareness: Adam Gilchrist was also roped in for the drive earlier.

Good job. My only request, can we please now ban the term Gayle force from the breathless coverage around him?

Beer drones for thirsty audience at South African music festival
 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Superman perchance? Well if you are at South Africa's OppiKoppi Music Festival in August this year, drones carrying beer will deliver your can (I presume it will be a can and not glass bottles!) via parachute as per Mashable.

The order can be placed on the phone. While the practical realities of such a delivery method may not be ideal (beer-drinking audience, accuracy of delivery), it sure will generate a nice little publicity buzz!

Now if only we could successfully conduct the great Indian jugaad on this idea, the possibilities are endless!

British TV channel dresses up historical figures for PR
 

British history channel Yesterday, released a series of portraits of historical characters including Nelson, Elizabeth I and Henry VIII, with a modern twist to show how these personalities may have looked like today.

Source: Queen Elizabeth I reimagined, The Independent

This was done to promote their new show ‘The Life of’ which looks at the lives of famous figures from history.

The story even made it to the ‘Freedom from Economics’ section of The Economic Times, which of course dropped all reference to the reason for the portraits!

View the rest of the portraits here.

Would be fun to see Indian TV coming with such an idea, the Bollywood@100 series for History channel, inspite of aggressive cross promotion on CNN IBN has not seen any interesting PR around it.

I reckon it would be interesting to see a photo shoot of yesteryear stars in modern garb. The lovely Madhubala as a modern diva or the famously Chaplinesque, romantic tramp Raj Kapoor directing a Katrina Kaif.

Have you seen any great or even bad PR?
 

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