The Nano, if you recall, took its avatar to rescue the struggling section of the Indian middle class families to thundering applause from the world in general. The car is widely seen as a fine case of using a company’s PR machinery effectively for marketing a product. And it is not difficult to see reason in the argument – before spending a single rupee towards marketing the product, everyone was already talking about the car. The cacophony grew louder as the product was first unveiled in 2008 and broke to …

One industry which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons has been the Airlines industry of India. Along with the emergence of low cost carriers, the hues and cries after the increase in fuel surcharge and long term unsustainability of low cost airlines hogged the limelight for long.  The industry has seen the dismal situation of Kingfisher airlines at present and the innovative offering of hot food in SpiceJet airlines. After having my regular encounters with airlines in the last two years and testing out all the …

Billboards, radio ads, television ads, television program sponsorships, movie product placements, online…  what’s next! All this while, marketers have been coming up with innovative promotion techniques, trying to get the customers engaged with the brand.
HUL takes it to the next level with Cornetto Luv Reels, makes a full-fledged 45 minutes movie series. Wall’s Cornetto has come up with a plan to launch a series of short movies, created by aspiring artistes. Nearly all of the crew for the movies comprises of upcoming actors, directors etc. Although it is not very …

Following up on the previous article on managing press relations, let’s focus on how it happens on the ground. As mentioned in the earlier article, and also pointed out in a comment, the biggest task for the brand is to get the journalist to write the article as a marketing pitch, and no as a bland news item. The example we took in the last one was ‘Now fly for Rs. 500’ v/s ‘Low cost airline launched’. Here is a case of a permanent conflict between the two parties.
The journalist, …

PR: we’ve often heard this term being used in the marketing parlance. So what is it. Simply stated, it a kind of promotion channel which, in the words of Mr. Kotler, aims at promoting, or protecting the image of a company or a specific product. It comprises various means like Press Relations, Corporate Communications, lobbying etc. I’ll be focusing on Press Relations for the rest of the article, and the views I’m going to present are based on my summer internship experience with a brand which leverages Press Relations quite …