Every day, countless new memes, videos and blogs are uploaded to the Internet. Most of these languish in (relative) obscurity. But a few go viral: they explode across the web, attracting the attention of hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people.
Viral content has the power to capture the public's attention for days, weeks, or even longer. For those aiming to reach a vast audience—be it for a corporate marketing endeavor, advocating a personal cause, or showcasing your cat's incredible talents—the question of what drives content to go viral online bears significant importance.
To shed light on this topic, we have Vivekanand Kilari, co-founder of Wubba Lubba Dub Dub, India's fastest-growing meme marketing company. They have successfully worked on campaigns like Mirzapur and Scam 1992, among others.
This episode is a treasure trove of insights for both marketers and creators looking to excel in the realm of meme marketing and creating viral content.
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00:00:05
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Sekar marketer, creative and media nerd. Welcome to
00:00:10
Speaker 1: the you incorporated podcast On this show, I catch up
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Speaker 1: with some of the most bad ass founders, business leaders
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Speaker 1: and content creators in the whole wide world. Whether you're
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Speaker 1: a marketer, creative or a budding founder, if you want
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Speaker 1: to build your brand your voice your way, you are
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Speaker 1: in the right place.
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Speaker 1: Join me on the you incorporated podcast and start building
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Speaker 1: your empire. Here we go.
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Speaker 1: Please join me in welcoming vivekanand Klay co-founder Waba Laba
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Speaker 1: Dub Dub One of the country's fastest growing new marketing
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Speaker 1: agencies
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Speaker 1: W L D d. Offers services across the viral marketing spectrum.
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Speaker 1: So that's stuff like me marketing experiential campaigns and so
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Speaker 1: much more. Welcome to the show.
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Speaker 1: Hi. Delighted to be here. Just at the face of
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Speaker 1: it is content viral, topical Is it organic? And how
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Speaker 1: much of it can be manufactured according to you? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: So I I believe there's 50 50% chance of both.
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Speaker 1: You can. It can either happen organically or you can
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Speaker 1: manufacture it. And what are the traits of organic content
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Speaker 1: that give you an indication primarily being I would say
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Speaker 1: first like What is it? What is the base of
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Speaker 1: the context? Say, if it's a Web series or if
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Speaker 1: I'm talking about a movie, it can be
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Speaker 1: potential meme or a dialogue that has a that is
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Speaker 1: not natural for people to hear, but it is somewhat relatable. Like,
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Speaker 1: for example, if I give something about with just doing
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Speaker 1: a hand action, a gesture where he's using a bad
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Speaker 1: word that was plain, it was simple, but it was
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Speaker 1: the most. It is one of the most
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Speaker 1: popular and consumed meme template to the state and it
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Speaker 1: There was no extensive dialogue. There was no big lines
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Speaker 1: or big words. It's just a simple hand gesture, which
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Speaker 1: turned into one of the most popular meme templates in India.
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Speaker 1: So it can be as simple as a hand gesture
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Speaker 1: to a dialogue or to
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Speaker 1: to an audio towards step. It could probably be a
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Speaker 1: dance step, or it would be a move. So I
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Speaker 1: feel these are the things that potentially I I try
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Speaker 1: to find in a content piece and then figure out
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Speaker 1: how much of this can get amplified and how large
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Speaker 1: can this go? And potentially they do go viral, given
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Speaker 1: that a lot of social media platforms are no longer
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Speaker 1: rewarding organic
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Speaker 1: content the way they used to. So how has the
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Speaker 1: converse of viral content changed? Given that social platforms are
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Speaker 1: now more keen to have you put money behind your content?
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Speaker 1: So honestly, I think I would put it in this
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Speaker 1: way
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Speaker 1: that although the platforms are trying for marketers to pay
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Speaker 1: for the kind of reach that they are looking and
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Speaker 1: stuff like this. But I feel cross pollination of content
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Speaker 1: and cross pollination of platform, you have an advantage over, say,
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Speaker 1: I would say, the algorithm or the platform guideline. This
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Speaker 1: is one of the ways you can amplify your content
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Speaker 1: without paying for the ads or the way they want
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Speaker 1: you to market these things.
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Speaker 1: Say, for example, if I'm talking about, say, if I
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Speaker 1: want to make a content piece viral, be it about
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Speaker 1: a movie show or a product doing that on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: then taking it on instagram. Also, having small bits of
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Speaker 1: chatter on Facebook gives you a larger advantage, because once
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Speaker 1: a lot of creators, a lot of brands see the
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Speaker 1: same kind of content popping up on multiple platforms they
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Speaker 1: generally can see. Consider it to be
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Speaker 1: viral or a potential content piece where they can hop
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Speaker 1: in correct. And once a lot of creators and a
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Speaker 1: lot of brands start to use that particular format or
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Speaker 1: particular content piece or a topic, then no, no platform
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Speaker 1: can like. You don't have to pay anything or no
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Speaker 1: platform platform can stop it from going viral. If you've
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Speaker 1: worked on some very iconic campaigns, there's, of course, the
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Speaker 1: American campaign,
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Speaker 1: the Sony Live Scam 1992 campaign. Could you take us
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Speaker 1: through how you would make scam? 1992 viral, but the
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Speaker 1: face of it scam 1992 It's about business, stock market,
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Speaker 1: the stuff that generally puts people to sleep. So take
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Speaker 1: us through how you went about making you know scam
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Speaker 1: 1992 Viral.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so for us, the primary objective was to make
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Speaker 1: to create a lot of chatter for the show so
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Speaker 1: that people end up watching and like you rightly mentioned generally,
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Speaker 1: if there's a dance or if there's this kind of
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Speaker 1: if there's a little bit of violence and all of
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Speaker 1: this involved, people generally tend to consume that content more. Right.
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Speaker 1: So here The idea was very simple because in the trailer, um,
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Speaker 1: and in the Pisa and all of these and from
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Speaker 1: what guidelines we've got we had understood one thing. That
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Speaker 1: this movie has a lot of powerful dialogues, lines that
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Speaker 1: come from the main character. So that being our primary objective,
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Speaker 1: we wrote on that. Correct.
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Speaker 1: So to start with, the trailer had a scene where
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Speaker 1: the three of them are walking out in suits. We
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Speaker 1: just created a template out of it. And to add,
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Speaker 1: I would say the benefit of that trailer was the
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Speaker 1: music title made by the artist called Ain Correct. It
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Speaker 1: was one of a kind. It is still a lot
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Speaker 1: of people selling tone, and a lot of people still
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Speaker 1: use it in a lot of videos. So that gave
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Speaker 1: us a It was a very good audio,
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Speaker 1: plus a visual combination that we created and that template
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Speaker 1: had was so easy to adapt that a creator with
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Speaker 1: I would say 500 followers could create a piece of
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Speaker 1: content on it. Two or five million follower creator, right?
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Speaker 1: So anybody and everybody on any platform could create multiple
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Speaker 1: pieces of content on it. Initially, all we did was
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Speaker 1: create few pieces and spread it on Instagram and primarily Instagram.
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Speaker 1: And from there it it picked up. It went on Twitter.
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Speaker 1: It went on Facebook. People started using it. And by
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Speaker 1: the time this flow had started the ring tone, the
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Speaker 1: music track
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Speaker 1: had a got a lot of I would say response
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people started to use it on
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Speaker 1: a regular basis. So that helped us a lot.
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Speaker 1: That helps. That helped us a lot in taking the
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Speaker 1: template more viral. And once the show came So I
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Speaker 1: would openly say this that there was a big advantage
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Speaker 1: that we got from the show was it was too good.
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Speaker 1: I hope you watch the show if I have. I'm
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Speaker 1: a big fan of the show. Yeah, yeah. So the
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Speaker 1: show had was too good. So it got a lot
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Speaker 1: of appreciation from people, and for us, it became much
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Speaker 1: easier to put out
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Speaker 1: the popular templates, the popular words, the badass scenes, scenes
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Speaker 1: from the show, correct, and all of these we used
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Speaker 1: very simple strategies here. Nothing was rocket because the show
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Speaker 1: was also good post this What we did one. This
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Speaker 1: was a purely new activation for us. We'd never done
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Speaker 1: this before, so I realised these scenes are so good
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Speaker 1: that these scenes should exist on YouTube.
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Speaker 1: Correct. So what I did is with the team. We
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Speaker 1: figured out these savage movements, these multiple things, and created
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Speaker 1: 7 10 minute videos out of it,
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Speaker 1: and we uploaded them on the production houses Handle, which
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Speaker 1: is applause entertainment. Correct. And they started to blow up mad.
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Speaker 1: If you still go and watch, if you check the channel,
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Speaker 1: you'll find five Crow. Seven Crow, 10 Crow. The views
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Speaker 1: were in,
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Speaker 1: the views were mad and what it eventually did is
00:08:35
Speaker 1: and luckily at that very time, shots had just so
00:08:39
Speaker 1: we started to cut snippets out of it and post
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Speaker 1: we just put, I think if I'm not wrong, I
00:08:44
Speaker 1: just I think we just put 10 to 15 videos,
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Speaker 1: That's it. And then what? It did it. It created
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Speaker 1: a ripple effect where people started to take out clips
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Speaker 1: from the show and started to upload it on a
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Speaker 1: YouTube shot on their own. And even today's stage,
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Speaker 1: if you're on shots and if you're scrolling. If you've
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Speaker 1: ever checked out stock market or any stock market related videos,
00:09:04
Speaker 1: the algorithm definitely suggests you the scam. 1992 shots, right?
00:09:09
Speaker 1: So these simple things help us take the show to
00:09:12
Speaker 1: a next level. So this is what I was talking about.
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Speaker 1: Cross pollination of platforms, right? You not. You don't necessarily
00:09:20
Speaker 1: need to stick to one platform
00:09:22
Speaker 1: because it might not work there, right? A lot of
00:09:25
Speaker 1: people used to come to YouTube to search stock related videos.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Somebody wants to learn how to open a account to
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Speaker 1: somebody who wants to understand where to invest and what
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Speaker 1: to invest. And there are a lot of YouTube channels.
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Speaker 1: So it was a right tap for us where we
00:09:39
Speaker 1: realised
00:09:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people who come here to understand about stock.
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Speaker 1: If they watch any of these clips, they'll potentially go
00:09:47
Speaker 1: and watch the show. Correct. And this entire loop helped us.
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Speaker 1: When somebody is on YouTube, they're watching it. They go
00:09:54
Speaker 1: and watch the show. They come back to, obviously this
00:09:57
Speaker 1: cruel instagram. A lot of people do it on a
00:09:59
Speaker 1: regular basis for a lot of arts,
00:10:01
Speaker 1: so they see the meme, And that's how they build
00:10:04
Speaker 1: more connectivity to the to the show. And definitely I
00:10:07
Speaker 1: would still give a lot of credit to the show
00:10:11
Speaker 1: and the creators because the show was too good. Yeah,
00:10:13
Speaker 1: speaking about these cult Web series, we're speaking about Mirzapur.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: We are speaking about scam 1992. How much of the
00:10:20
Speaker 1: viral of the
00:10:22
Speaker 1: content campaign is led by money and how much of
00:10:26
Speaker 1: it is organic? How do you determine when to pay? So,
00:10:31
Speaker 1: for example, if I'm considering, say, an next show and
00:10:34
Speaker 1: if it's a good show but it's not, it's not
00:10:38
Speaker 1: for everybody, right? There are some shows which only a
00:10:42
Speaker 1: certain audience enjoys. And then there are these massive shows
00:10:47
Speaker 1: which everybody enjoys. Correct.
00:10:49
Speaker 1: Um, so what we essentially do is whenever we have
00:10:52
Speaker 1: something very niche, the best platform for conversations right now
00:10:57
Speaker 1: is Twitter. Correct? People are putting out what they like
00:11:00
Speaker 1: about the show. What is happening in the show? Who
00:11:03
Speaker 1: are those characters? What they what are they doing? All
00:11:06
Speaker 1: of these things are mostly done on Twitter, right? So
00:11:10
Speaker 1: if we are targeting a show that,
00:11:12
Speaker 1: uh is character heavy, but less but is a niche
00:11:16
Speaker 1: or a less of story. We focus on Twitter, right?
00:11:20
Speaker 1: Build the chatter there first, then potentially take it to
00:11:24
Speaker 1: Instagram and Facebook and YouTube shows right? And the second
00:11:28
Speaker 1: way is whenever it's a massy show, all we have
00:11:31
Speaker 1: to do is we generally start it from Instagram,
00:11:35
Speaker 1: right? Because show pile, you don't necessarily need good or
00:11:40
Speaker 1: smart creators to start the conversation. It can start from
00:11:44
Speaker 1: any random handle as well. Yeah, so
00:11:47
Speaker 1: this is our ideal approach when we are creating something
00:11:51
Speaker 1: like this
00:11:53
Speaker 1: And, yeah, coming back to the point when I mentioned
00:11:55
Speaker 1: it's ideally 50. Our job is to not create content
00:12:00
Speaker 1: all the time, right? We have to create every piece
00:12:04
Speaker 1: of content and then drive the narrative. All we try
00:12:07
Speaker 1: to do create a ripple effect, right? Be it with
00:12:11
Speaker 1: a dialogue or a meme template or a video clip
00:12:14
Speaker 1: or a video meme template. All we try to do
00:12:17
Speaker 1: is bring it in the culture
00:12:21
Speaker 1: and then let it spread on its own. OK, and
00:12:23
Speaker 1: how do you track how it's spreading? Because viral, by
00:12:27
Speaker 1: its definition, is quite chaotic as well, right? So when
00:12:31
Speaker 1: do you know what's the indicator for you?
00:12:36
Speaker 1: The indicator is when the entire Internet is talking about
00:12:40
Speaker 1: it right, especially the ones that variant activators are not
00:12:45
Speaker 1: our creators.
00:12:47
Speaker 1: That is the best way to understand that this is
00:12:50
Speaker 1: working out.
00:12:51
Speaker 1: If I want to put it in larger terms, then
00:12:54
Speaker 1: when multiple creators brands are hopping on it organically, that
00:13:00
Speaker 1: is a much larger way to to say that, yes,
00:13:04
Speaker 1: what we did worked out
00:13:07
Speaker 1: apart from this, Sometimes when the brand has mandates like, Hey,
00:13:11
Speaker 1: you need to use this hashtag or stuff like that
00:13:13
Speaker 1: then hashtag also helps you. Yeah, we track the hashtag
00:13:18
Speaker 1: and at the same time, so there are some good
00:13:20
Speaker 1: features that Instagram gives a lot of creators or a
00:13:23
Speaker 1: lot of I would say, other meme companies sometimes don't
00:13:26
Speaker 1: understand this. But for example, there's a re
00:13:29
Speaker 1: feature in Instagram Say, for example, you have put out
00:13:33
Speaker 1: a video. I can just take that video and create
00:13:36
Speaker 1: a remix on it when I have my face or
00:13:38
Speaker 1: I'm putting up a video clip. Correct that if you
00:13:41
Speaker 1: go and click on that remix feature, you will find
00:13:45
Speaker 1: a lot of videos there, say for example, I used
00:13:49
Speaker 1: one of your audio right. Hey, this is then I
00:13:53
Speaker 1: do so and so anything right?
00:13:57
Speaker 1: I take this audio clip and I create a video
00:14:00
Speaker 1: on it, and I upload it. What we do is
00:14:03
Speaker 1: we use the remix feature like that. One video from
00:14:07
Speaker 1: one page is used by multiple creators.
00:14:10
Speaker 1: Correct. And when you click on that remix feature, you'll
00:14:14
Speaker 1: actually find all the videos created in that on that
00:14:18
Speaker 1: video or on that audio.
00:14:23
Speaker 1: And that is one another way to track how good
00:14:26
Speaker 1: your content or your format or your piece of content
00:14:30
Speaker 1: is actually working out. Say, for example, I just had
00:14:33
Speaker 1: to create 10 videos. But on that particular remix, I'm
00:14:37
Speaker 1: finding 1000 videos. That means 990 were created by random
00:14:42
Speaker 1: people on the Internet. So that's one of the success
00:14:44
Speaker 1: metric we consider What's your take on solo creators putting
00:14:49
Speaker 1: money behind their content
00:14:51
Speaker 1: in an effort to try and go viral? Do you
00:14:52
Speaker 1: think it? It makes any sense for solo creators to
00:14:55
Speaker 1: do that? Ideally, I'm a person who never
00:14:59
Speaker 1: would suggest, or I've never put in any money in
00:15:03
Speaker 1: any kind of advertisement to grow any of my handles right?
00:15:06
Speaker 1: Like I personally we personally own around. I think 25
00:15:10
Speaker 1: to 30 pages and out of these 45 pages are
00:15:14
Speaker 1: nationally recognised, right, and they're in very specific genres. For example,
00:15:19
Speaker 1: we have a page called A, which has, I think,
00:15:22
Speaker 1: 360 k followers right now with an engagement of 5
00:15:26
Speaker 1: to 10%. And all of this came naturally
00:15:29
Speaker 1: like we've never spent a single buck. Right, And there
00:15:32
Speaker 1: were only two people working on this handle as well.
00:15:36
Speaker 1: The same advice, I think what advice I would give
00:15:39
Speaker 1: to single creators is you might paint. So I'll tell you,
00:15:44
Speaker 1: there's one very simple thing with Instagram pages instagram to
00:15:48
Speaker 1: be specific. This is there's a plain and simple thing.
00:15:51
Speaker 1: You start a page today, OK, you start creating great content.
00:15:55
Speaker 1: You give value to people's time to your content, correct.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: And you keep doing this repeatedly, your engagement will start
00:16:05
Speaker 1: growing slowly. It you might so so there are two
00:16:08
Speaker 1: types of creators who make it big One are one
00:16:12
Speaker 1: shot hits like suddenly they create something and they're a hit.
00:16:16
Speaker 1: And then there are these consistently growing creators.
00:16:20
Speaker 1: So what happens is when you spend a single buck,
00:16:25
Speaker 1: a single dollar or a single rupee on the platform,
00:16:29
Speaker 1: the algorithm will never favour you after that.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: Right? And this I you will see this on a
00:16:35
Speaker 1: lot of brand handles like mid scale brand handles. I
00:16:39
Speaker 1: wouldn't say this for a big brand. For example, a
00:16:41
Speaker 1: Netflix promoting an ad makes sense for them because they
00:16:45
Speaker 1: want it to go to a lot of people. But
00:16:47
Speaker 1: a lot of single creators or small businesses and startups.
00:16:52
Speaker 1: They spend money in
00:16:53
Speaker 1: paying the platform to advertise their content. And the moment
00:16:57
Speaker 1: you do it, the platform never wants you to get
00:17:00
Speaker 1: organic reach right? Because once you've paid for it, they
00:17:03
Speaker 1: always want you to pay. So the first protocol is
00:17:06
Speaker 1: to never spend.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: Add money on your handles before you. Can you give
00:17:13
Speaker 1: it a try? I would say Give three months to it.
00:17:16
Speaker 1: Dedicate three months, keep creating multiple pieces of content, be
00:17:21
Speaker 1: it one post a day or be 10 posts a day.
00:17:23
Speaker 1: Give it all. Try everything that is there. Work on
00:17:26
Speaker 1: trending stuff, create your own trends. Formats
00:17:30
Speaker 1: use crossover things. Use popular things create reels, create static,
00:17:35
Speaker 1: create audios, do everything possible, right?
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Only if nothing is working out then. And if you
00:17:44
Speaker 1: are willing to spend, then go and spend a money
00:17:47
Speaker 1: on a platform right before that. Don't do it because
00:17:51
Speaker 1: the moment you do it, you're killing your reach forever.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: And you'll have to consistently keep spending again and again
00:17:57
Speaker 1: to get that same kind of engagement or response in
00:18:01
Speaker 1: your post. And on that insightful note, it's a wrap.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the podcast. We
00:18:07
Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking time out. Thanks, man. It was
00:18:10
Speaker 1: really nice. Good questions, fun stuff. Guys, please do tune
00:18:14
Speaker 1: in for the next episode of the U Incorporated podcast.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: See ya.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning into the you incorporated podcast with me.
00:18:29
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