Yes Banks’ educational amusement park for kids is a PR success

 17th January 2013    Good and Bad PR 

Say yes to great PR with the new ‘Yes Bank’ initiative to teach kids banking
 

What do stodgy banks and dreary financial processes have to do with children? Plenty, it seems. Private bank, Yes Bank, has become the official sponsor for the bank establishment of Kidzania Mumbai. Kidzania Mumbai is an upcoming amusement park for children between the age of 4 and 14 that helps them discover grown-up life, including professions and cities, through role play.

With children, who can afford to play at parks like these; will presumably come well heeled parents with fat bank accounts. The unusual combination of children and banking is bound to get attention from the media: helping both Yes Bank and Kidzania Mumbai to create a buzz for both brands. A neat conceptual tie up that will help leverage story selling points beyond just banking and that dreadful word "edutainment"!

Unlock Numbers to create a buzz: Zee Cafe
 

Zee Cafe managed to break through the top two on the twitter trends list, with an innovative contest to aggressively promote the premiere of the TV series Numb3rs . Retweeting the contest unlocked simple questions around Mathematics, the premise of the crime drama series .

Interesting online PR from a channel that does not often seem to really promote its shows – many of which are decent – as much as, say, Star World.

Sensitive PR for a very serious issue: Acid attacks on women
 

It’s always difficult to create awareness on an issue as tragic and as serious as acid attacks on women. But this freeze mob protesting such attacks at one of the biggest stations of Delhi Metro raised awareness about this issue in a quiet and sensitive, yet very public, manner with this freeze mob.

Most major papers covered the freeze mob against acid attacks attended by participants donning black glasses to symbolise the blindness that these attacks often cause and yellow bands, standing for the acid that burns away the lives of these women. If it was not for the already heightened awareness around women’s safety following the mass protests in late December, this is a story that sadly would otherwise not have received such wide attention.

That the government is grappling with how to deal with this and other protests is clear from the fact  that the Indian Express carried a lead story this week; quoting sources as saying that the Indian National Congress Party is planning to discuss flash mobs and ways to tackle this “new phenomenon” at its annual Chintan Shivir to be held in Jaipur next week.

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.