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Sahara: The untold story

This book by Tamal Bandyopadhyay is banned from release. Also the Sahara has filed a defamation suit against suing for damages. However the whole drama raises a few questions in my mind:
Will you and I be ever talking about the book if Sahara had not taken court action? The legal action created the free publicity which this book might never get. I remember watching so many movies, reading so many books for the only reason being that they were banned for release in India.
We might be guilt of making fun of Chinese’s communication, but people in China know and understand PR, Brand Image and publicity much better than India or rest of the world can ever can. Recently the government owned media houses were bad mouthing MNC like Johnson & Johnson, P&G, Pepsi etc. blaming them for some exaggerated truth, sins of their vendors (who are government owned monopoly and hence were not chosen by these MNC directly), and some unfortunate but not deliberate or serious mishaps. Accusing of child labor, cancer causing ingredients are always the soft targets. In most cases these MNC chose to ignore these allegations and net result such accusations faded away.
A smart PR manager only tracks the twitter & facebook feeds these days. If any negative news has not started trending, then its best to ignore it and let it fade away in oblivion. Most news flashes die in a few hours unless fanned back to life by legal action, press release or denial/clarification via the official brand manager. Hence you would step in only when required. Bad publicity feeds on the brand for its survival and any official action is seen as an official endorsement resulting in the switch from a probable “conspiracy theory” cooked by a lunatic  to a “Most likely true mystery”.

street, Bengaluru South, Karnataka, India

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