Last seen, 15 million and counting! The number of hits that Kolaveri garnering smashing all records gathered hitherto by any Tamil song or for that matter, ANY hindi song. Add to this the millions of hits on the duplicated ones and the thousand Kolaveri remakes!! Indeed, Kolaveri this!
But a more interesting number that I came across was the 1 million hits that Ra.One gathered! One million numbers is no speck in the dust but one million after the umpteen times we had to change our TV channels just to force SRK's advertising blitz out of our living rooms meant million numbers isnt all that an Himalayan number.
Enough data and stats for me to rattle some keys on my laptop and waste some of your productive time. The small computer science brain inside tells me this could quite be an epoch in the history of advertising's chequered history. What started in olden Egypt in the form of papyrus rolls, today is a multi million industry and so often a bad 'branding' and reputation could spell the death knell for any company. So often, we have to come to remember a brand not because of the product that it is, but because of an inspired piece of brilliance that an ad film maker would have come up with.
But today, like never before, all the traditional advertisement mediums like print and television are in grave danger of losing their relevance. From a computer science perspective, these mediums represent a one level tree with the second level being constructed only through word of mouth which has a much lower probability compared to the social networks like twitter and facebook.
No doubt, the future of advertising lies in social advertising. But, it would be interesting to know if its really quality material that spreads viral through the social network. Or would we be pushed into a dark world where only the popular rules the roost? Can the social network be hijacked by the marketing gurus to feed us their content?
Personally, I beleive the the viral growth of social networks has led to quality products being given a fillip because of word of the mouth.Or is it really? Or will only the materials which pleases the mass be audible to us?
An exciting period in advertising surely this!
