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.