Rise of the Social Media Star

By Rashmi Menon & Satrajit Sen, afaqs!, New Delhi,
March 19, 2013 Section: News Category: Digital

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Salman Khan for Thums Up; Sachin Tendulkar for Aviva. afaqs! looks at an emerging trend in social media and predicts that it will explode over the next 12 months.

Celebrity power works everywhere in the world but it seems to have a special aura in India because of a combination of factors: intense competition in markets, little differentiation between brands, media clutter and that India-specific something: a plethora of filmstars that consumers dote on. Social media emphasises, in a unique way, the special place celebrities enjoy in consumer minds.
When Thums Up launched its new TV commercial featuring Salman Khan, it put the ad on its facebook page where it has a reasonable following - 4.5 lakh fans. As has become standard practice, it uploaded its TVC on facebook on February 23 this year but the response was tepid: it received eight comments, 168 likes and 91 fans shared it with their friends. (The commercial was subsequently re-posted.)
On the following day the TVC went up on facebook/beingsalmankhan. The same TVC has been liked so far by 106,447 lakh people, with 7,930 fans posting comments - and another 7,792 of them sharing it with their friends. Consider that the typical Indian on facebook has 234 friends and imagine the kind of buzz and views that this would have created. This is - to use a popular expression - awesome but understandable since this Khan has 7.7 million fans on facebook.
Seen as a first of its kind initiative on social media for a major brand, this was meant to help the brand use the social reach and clout of Salman Khan. Anupama Ahluwalia, vice president, marketing, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia, is very happy with the outcome. In addition to the massive facebook response, the campaign has also received nearly 1.5 Lakh YouTube visits. "It served as a perfect platform for us to convey Thums Up's message of 'Aaj Kuch Toofani Kartey Hain' to a large consumer base," she says. Ahluwalia points out that it marks the star and the soft drink brand renewing their ties after a decade - in recent years, Salman was associated with PepsiCo's Mountain Dew.
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