Why This Kolaveri Di a Viral Marketing Hit?

Sony Music India has created a viral phenomenon, the likes of which has never been seen before in India, for the cros- cultural Tamil-English musical hit "Why this Kolaveri Di."Reaching over 29 million hits and 85,792 comments on Youtube in just over four short weeks. In just 10 hours, Why This Kolaveri Di, written and sung by Dhanush, became the most-searched song on Google and most-shared on Facebook. The song Kolaveri appeared as the number one Indian trend on Twitter on November 21, with many tweeting random bits of the song.

The term Kolaveri, meaning ‘murderous rage’, is now being picked up by marketers and brands alike and people in other parts of the work as a form of expression. The track is also the first regional language (Tamil) song ever to see a high rotation on Mainstream Music Channels - play listed on 43 Radio Stations Pan-India and gaining.

In fact , the song has got many versions released, “Female Version”, “Give me Milk Version by Naveen Nigam”, and “One Random Remix” after its sentional hit on the internet. There are almost 1000 search results appearing for the search query Kolaveri Di on YouTube.

Now there are many spoof videos floating around the YouTube based on Kolaveri Di, which indicates the height of popularity of the song.

According to social media analytics firm Social Hues, Between 1 and 10 November (even before the official launch of the song), there were 43,800 mentions of Kolaver in the US, 7,000 in France and 4,000 from the UAE. Tamil movie fanatics (mostly male) and non-resident Indians drove most of the traffic in the US and the Gulf, and students studying abroad made up the majority of mentions in Europe.

From 16 November on, according to Social Hues, the rate of Twitter mentions of Kolaveri increased by nearly 200% every day, starting at 179 and peaking a week later at 14,907 tweets on 24 November—the day after it became the first Tamil film song to be played on MTV and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan (Famous Bollywood Actor) had tweeted about his admiration for the tune. Most traffic was driven by Facebook, which accounted for nearly 80% of social media mentions of the song, followed by Twitter and YouTube, according to Social Hues.

Life Goes On Without You...

It has been a few months, long and tiring months, since my love, Juhi, was killed in United States. Although the journey hasn't been easy, I can say with thanks to friends and God, for making it bearable. The overwhelming of support can be summed up in a single word: humbling. I cannot ever express enough thanks to the men and women around me; you held me up when I stumbled, you gave me the strength to continue, you reminded me to breath.

I still remember how fun my times were with her. Its hard to believe now that she is long gone. I am not sure how hard it is for others who are forced to lose their loved one's to an crappy accident. For me, time stopped when I heard that she met with an terrible accident while heading home and struggling for life. Eventually, she couldn't make it and I had to lose her. I was scared to believe that I could see those beautiful smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!

Every now and then my mind would linger on a single thought - about Juhi's life and her accomplishments, and I wondered how I influenced her, if at all. I always described her as being able to do anything I could do, "only better". Hearing all sort of things of her furthered this perception. She was adorable, a good lover, probably the most beautiful girl in the world, and she made people laugh and feel good about themselves and most importantly to me.

Each one of us goes on with the lives we were given. What scares me most is that this wouldn't change, this sorrow, this mourning, this sense of loss. And I would be changing, moving on to new relationships, new friendships, and new interests and still be dead inside. As I continue on my journey, I will heal and grow. Life goes on without you, I wish you here…

Certain Things You Must Know About Social Media

It is now a buzz that social media marketing will merge into other marketing activities and there will not be opportunity for a separate Social Media marketer. So, Do you have a career in social media marketing? Will social media have a life apart of all other marketing activities? Well, I think that the answer to both of these questions YES.

As it said, Brand is the community of people who feel affinity to it. We use different tools like TV, Facebook, print ads, events, Twitter to communicate with that group. The main goal is the connection between community members and the brand. You would want to make existing members more engaged and bring in new people.

It’s a bit like public relations, but on a much more personalized way. In some cases you will be talking to a single person or a small group on the other hand you can use TV to reach millions in a way that community expects you to. For example TV ads will be personalized… though! Not just that we show ads based on the interests and behavior of the viewer but the ad content itself will be personalized with the name of the person, favorite color, earlier purchases or activity on the social networks.

The community manager’s work will span all channels and strive to be as personal as possible. So, you could say that you are doing web banners or TV ads, but they wouldn’t work without the social context. This is insanely powerful! One ad agency used my name and the name of my girlfriend in the character dialog. This ad ran a few months ago and I still remember the ad and the context. This can be scaled!

Social networks will be the core and marketing will be the tools to build it. Post-sale interaction will grow in tremendously as the real experience of using the brand will make people more engaged and willing to share their experiences. You lay your marketing plans by analyzing the underlying social graph. Then you put a post here, a discount there, maybe a TV ad in certain region, etc.

As Jeremiah Owyang pointed out one on one social media doesn’t scale. This means that the task of social media marketer will be to build and nurture the true fans of the brand. True fans will be the group that helps you scale without losing personal touch. You will give away a lot of control but the rewards will be worth it.

In contrast, the social media marketer has to train the people inside the company to interact with the community. Achieving authenticity may be difficult for some and helping them to relate to the consumers of their work is very important.

Social media marketer, community manager or SMO, call her what you will. The one who builds the stickiest social graph around their brand will win. Now technology has given us the tools to actually measure and work with that social graph...