Nestle India co-creates health content with Hindustan Times and wins Great PR

 30th October 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Nestle India creates great health content with Hindustan Times

Who doesn’t want to get fit for the holiday season? In a great example of content co-creation, Nestle has tied up with HT City, the popular supplement of Hindustan Times to launch a 12-week health challenge to get fit. Take a look at their website to pledge to be fit and stress free.

Every day HT City carries diets, personal stories, face-off challenges, exercise tips and celeb quotes in the Get Healthy Delhi campaign. Sponsored by Nestle, the campaign focuses on healthy eating and fitness moves rather than crash dieting and unhealthy eating habits. HT city has been devoting a daily page for it, with local celebs tweeting encouragement.

Get Healthy Delhi ‏@HTGetHealthy23 Oct RJ Abhilash from @Fever_104FM knows exactly how much effort a gym session really takes! Read what he has to say: http://bit.ly/17f1nBW

A relevant campaign, endorsed by Delhi CM, Sheila Dixit with great content creation, and done intelligently. Usually this kind of content would only be seen on TV (Biggest Loser Jeetega'), so it's interesting to see this happen in a newspaper.

Cadbury Celebrations invites crowd sourced messages for Diwali as part of their celebration song

Crowd sourced content is becoming increasingly popular in India. First there was Maybelline New York India’s crowd sourced” Kiss” song to publicise ‘Baby Lips’ balm.

Now just in time for the Diwali celebrations, Cadbury Celebration has launched the 'Moments Made with Love' Contest.  In keeping with the brand’s positioning of moments of celebration, people have been invited to write in and tell Cadbury how they spend time this Diwali with their loved ones. The best messages get a chance to feature in a Video Song by Cadbury Celebrations.



Though the trend towards crowd based content is interesting and will be a crowd pleaser, it could soon become way too common a ploy to be called Great PR.

Bad PR

Delhi Chief Minister’s Onion woes get her zero sympathy

It seems to be the extremely silly season for political parties. With elections around the corner, many politicians are not doing themselves any favours, by shooting off their mouth, sometimes on extremely sensitive issues. And the Indian National Congress seems especially afflicted with this, of late.

First Congress Vice- President, Rahul Gandhi, said that ISI agents were contacting young members of the Muslim community in Muzaffarnagar, a statement that gave the BJP much ammunition for criticism.

Now with onion prices shooting up to over Rs. 70-80 a kg, Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dixit, said at a press conference that she has not eaten onions for a week. With elections around the corner in Delhi (and onion prices being a key election issue that the BJP lost on in the 1998 state elections), Dixit may have hoped to gain some empathy in the run up to the polls.

But with people struggling to buy this dietary staple in Indian food, Dixit’s statement just comes across as plain insensitive, giving the BJP and the Aam Admi Party a stick to beat the government with. Few will believe that a privileged politician in India cannot afford onions.

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.