Friday, June 27, 2008

COOL!

Hello everyone. I started a new blog today on advertising. Yes. Now, for the first time i feel like musing a little deeper into advertising. www.bread-crumbz.blogspot.com
That is when it occured to me to take a look at our blog which i thought lay dormant. How wrong I was.

And good to know! A few month delayed but what the heck? Congratulations to us.

How come we havn't discussed the "Shivaji - The Boss" syndrome here?

You know what I found interesting?

Rajnikanth's super stardome has existed for many years now.
There was Padayapa, Chandramukhi, Arunachalam and many other similar iconic films - in tamil land - I lived in Chennai through some of these movies. I don't recall me or any of my friends wanting to catch his movies inspite of that.

But Shivaji changed all that.

Suddenly everybody just HAD to see the movie. I mean EVRYBODY. It didn't matter if they understood tamil or not. People flew down to cities that played the movie. Well, a small troupe of advertising professionals did fly down.

It was the first Rajnikant movie i saw at a theatre. In a Mumbai multiplex.

There are two things this phenomena brings to light

One ofcourse is the power of viral marketing and hype creation. You know, there was a clip from the movie showcasing some of his typical stunts doing the rounds in the email. It cracked people up and go "man! i have to see this man in action!"

Second, is our comfort with embracing who we really are. India is suddenly proud of itself. It no longer feels the need to be 'western' to be respected. Everything we shied away from before, we now flaunt.

Our villages, our colloquialism, our names, our attire, our people, maybe even our accents. We love it all.


PS: If the title of this post went over your head, in the movie, Rajnikant makes the word 'cool' sound like it is... well, the coolest thing to say. It's hillarious and good fun.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

hey pooja, nice to hear your views.
yes i agree with both the points.

the loudest shout gets the attention today and yes we are getting confident with ourselves. although it has taken at least a decade to gain this level of confidence. so maybe it's not so sudden after all...

keep writing!

Unknown said...

i beg to differ with u .india was & is a cauldron of all kinds of diversities & opposites co- existing simultainously.R's fan following was there even when u were in chennai,but u were oblivious of its existance[coz none of u r chennai friends were fans].this time u got swept off in the fan fare frenzy.do u know that many cine-stars cultivate & nurture their own fan's assn.it is a necessary accesory of the job.
score to COOL advertising tactics too.

meraj said...

and you missed out the THIRD aspect, Pooja. There hasnt been a bigger SUPERSTAR than Rajnikanth in the whole film history of India.

Pooja Nair said...

thanks for your views manish, sheela and meraj! all valid points...

Anonymous said...

Please guys can you remove my name from list of contributors?

Really - it's been there long enough, I don't and will not be blogging here... + don't exactly belong to an Indian planners thingie now tech... PLEASE can someone do this already .. thanks!