Well well well.. Here’s a Marketing Stunt that’s gone horribly wrong. Sony Liv was recently under fire for the rather bizarre promotion of their show ‘Undekhi’, which ended up creating panic and confusion amongst the people.
People were receiving frantic calls wherein a man named Rishi nervously told them that he had witnessed a murder, which he happened to record on his camera. And the killers were now after him.
While the bone-chilling start left listeners terrified, the last few seconds of the phone call revealed that it was just promotion of Undekhi. Turns out Sony Liv had made these automated prank phone calls to people as a part of their marketing gimmick.
Check out the video of the recorded phone call:
However, this technique didn’t go well with the public, who called it ‘insensitive’, ‘sick’ and ‘ridiculous’. Apparently, a woman thought it was her actual friend Rishi who had called and panicked.
The Mumbai Police was urged to take action as their control room was flooded with calls by worried people, reporting the strange calls they had received from numbers starting with 140 or 40.
Once the furious people called out Sony Liv for its panic-inducing strategy, the streaming platform took to Twitter to apologise saying that it was a ‘test activity’ that had gone out accidentally. And that they regretted causing any inconvenience.
Maharashtra Cyber cell warned the streaming platform to immediately stop this promotional activity and asked people to not panic if they received any such calls.
Mumbai Police also tweeted a strict warning that any publicity creating panic and suggesting a threat to citizen’s security will be dealt with the necessary severity.
What do you think of this weird Promotional Gimmick?
