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Why all the Kolaveri Di?

This one question played on everyones lips across the globe, regardless of age, language or nationality. A

single song reaching such unprecedented popularity was never ever imagined in this day and age where

the number of songs being churned out globally comes second only to plastic waste generated on earth.

One could call it luck and the work of destiny, but one cannot simply take away from the fact that nothinghappens in this world by chance and it is always by design. In this case, a serious infringement of privacy

and the subsequent digital robbery of creative content with a sole motive of sabotage was cleverly

countered attacked and orchestrated by the all those involved in the process. This is an over analysed

topic, with a million expert opinions having been splashed across the media. I am just going to try and

explain what worked for me as a viewer and what my takeaways from this whole campaign were:

Queen for the win : While every language under the sun has beautiful lyrics and supportingmusic that make it a pure listening delight, this song proved that English certainly has an

unparalleled reach across the globe. Though this song will certainly make the queen lose some

sleep, the crude use of the language had a reach across all Indians at first who were the primary

target, and more importantly people located all around the globe as well.

Curiosity bells the cat: In modern day scenario curiosity does not kill, it in fact helps sell. Theclever use of local slang in the song like Kolaveri and soup boys piqued peoples interest into

wanting to know what it meant, being a south Indian was never as cool for me personally as it was

receiving frantic calls, messages, facebook pings about what these meant in our local parlance and

it suddenly shot all tamilians way high up on the non-existent cool meter created by some

ishstud Punjabi munda who for a brief period of time gave up on Honey Singh for Danush.

Sorrow thrives: Even the comic greats in the world like Chaplin have made references abouthow the world thrives more in sorrow than in joy. This song made a love failure so thoroughlyheartening that every self-proclaimed Romeo around the world could relate to it and sang along

reminiscing in the sorrow exuded by the song about some similar story in their lives. The song

gave a new found way to celebrate a heart loss than what has been depicted by the entertainment

world for ages. The slobbering drunkard now was given a chirpier lovable avatar and it is the

song of a jilted lover pouring out his anguish became way more popular than one could have ever

imagined.

Good things in small packages: A dark frail looking Dhanush and an even smaller chomulooking Anirudh (music director) had a visual appeal that was pitiable and at the same time

extremely adorable. Understandably the women, but even men found it hard to resist these

seeming underdogs. A rough basic video made predominantly picturing these two had a waybetter connect with the masses than any video made in recent past with all of the worlds hi -tech

gadgets combined.

Playing the sympathy vote: In a brilliant marketing strategy, the 3 team came out in the opento announce how they were back stabbed by some villains and that this was done only to try and

save the movie and all the efforts & hard work. While in an industry where plagiarism and

copycatting is not unheard of, this move proved to be a complete winner. It won sympathy for

the team and thereby made the song an unparalleled success. This also helped because it avoided

making the campaign sound like a sales pitch, which could have come across as needy and put

people off. It just sounded like a bleak attempt to save their creative work and it paid off.

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Awesomeness of the share button : While in any other medium of marketing can happen onlythrough word of mouth, where a person can merely suggest it to his or her friends, with digital

media, the awesomeness lies in being able to immediately share it and virtually, literally and

figuratively, forcing your friends into viewing the content. Thus there is ginormous increase in the

number of hits tipping any creative content into heights of popularity.

The rampant kolaveri in the world: It helped the song came around at a time when the worldat large was brimming with a feeling of Kolaveri. In India, there were politicians, sportspersonalities asking to be murdered owing to their actions, rather inactions. Across the world a

similar feeling was directed at bosses, teachers and anybody in a position of authority. It thus

became a phenomenon that was universally applicable given the levels of stress and frustration

people were facing in all walks of life.

The PR and Marketing strategies: All the aforementioned points were only helpful in creating astrongly sellable content, but what actually helped was the well monitored strategy employed by

the creative folks at Jack in the Box Worldwide - the agency which designed Kolaveri's viral

strategy. At first, Sony Music began by putting a link to the video on its Facebook page, which has

a million followers. Next, it began releasing tweets about the video, creating the #whythiskolaveri

account on Twitter. There were 179 tweets on November 17th, which further rose by 200 per centdaily, to peak at 14,907 tweets on November 24. From the virtual world, the song was also shared

with the real one towards the end of the first week, with radio stations and television channels

being allowed to air it. FM station Radio Mirchi and MTV got exclusive rights to use the song for

two days. Noticing the uproar in the entertainment space, news channels began discussing

Kolaveri, further fuelling its popularity. These were all done with an intent to increase the

popularity and hence due credit must be given for creating the benchmark which the likes of PSY

with Gangnam may have possibly aped.

Moral of the story: It created history and will remain etched in peoples memory for years tocome. But so immense were its popularity that anyone who tries a similar route will only be

mocked at as poor copy gimmick. While, one cannot follow the same path, it has in fact broken

several myths about creative marketing and has helped open several doors for unconventional

selling. Nothing has yet matched Kolaveri, but it has created hope and excitement among people

about when they will be caught unawares in a cleverly planted marketing trap. When the dust

settles on all this, we can only wonder, why all this kolaveri di?