At the time of filing this column, and my computer has packed up twice already! - Tamil film industry superstar Rajnikanth had 2 lakh 50 thousand follows on twitter.Pittance by his exalted standards – twitter itself is expected to have crashed you see!
But jokes apart, the handle started just yesterday, and was ‘verified’ with twitter’s trademark blue tick mark late afternoon. So, zero to 2.50 lakh in less than 36 hours makes @superstarrajini one of the fastest ever climbs in global twitter sweepstakes.
Not surprisingly, a series of fake accounts have surfaced – the most misleading one being @superstarrajni.What makes Brand Rajini rather special is that there’s just been one tweet from that account.
“Salutation to the lord. VaIJakkam aIJaivarukkum !! A big thank you to all my fans. Excited on this digital journey,” the man said, linking the tweet to a youtube video, http://goo.gl/hyuvZx.
I clicked on “follow”, only to discover a smart ‘by name’ revert. I am sure that added to the excitement of thousands of tweeps like me who don’t quite follow Tamil films, but we do enjoy the sheer scale and irrationality of the jokes and tales around Rajini-saar!
From initial signs, Brand Rajinikanth poses a significant medium-term threat to top Indian actors like Amitabh Bachchan, who joined Twitter in May 2010 and has 86 lakh follows, and Shah Rukh Khan who has 75 lakh.
For at least three reasons.
First, his brand minders are thinking hard for the ageing superstar. Other top Tamil stars like Kamal Haasan, Vijay, Ajith Kumar, Suriya have all stayed away from Twitter. But CA Media Digital’s first venture Fluence, a celebrity digital network, has managed to convince Rajini to invest in the digital economy, including letting them manage his Twitter handle.
This for a man, who unlike Amitabh Bachchan has been endorsing everything from local jewellers to ‘laal tel’, has never lent his name. These are the kind of ideas, if executed carefully, can refresh a brand in the eyes of the digi-savvy generation.
Then, the way twitter is promoting this casting coup is the basis of my added confidence. They know they have much catching up to do here – given that in their filing for an IPO in December last, India was a minnow. “An S-1 filing by Twitter makes depressing reading for any Indian,” I wrote in a column.
“In the 234 pages of text that the company has filed, India doesn’t seem to exist as a market place of ideas or even revenue streams. Our celebrities don’t seem to have tweeted anything worth a single screen shot. And for all our hype about innovation, not one of our new media companies is smart enough to be mentioned as potential spoiler in where Twitter, Inc. wishes to be.”
Twitter’s arguments had annoyed me. “We face competition from well established competitors in certain international markets, including Kakao in South Korea and lINE in Japan,” the microblogging site had stated.
Sina Weibo, which like the South Korean and Japanese new media services, was repeatedly mentioned as a threat “in local markets, mobile applications and services which have expanded and may continue to expand in their geographic context.”
India’s depressing exclusion was rubbed in when the S-1 filing gave Barack Obama pride of place in screenshots in the filing, hugging Michelle and announcing their second term in the White House. Can’t complain on that as is by far the most popular tweet ever.
But then Clarence House was cited announcing the royal baby. A Japanese mountaineer was taken note of tweeting his way to the Everest. The fact that NASA announced ice on Mars via Twitter was celebrated (the spokesperson has reciprocated stating that the space agency is flattered by the mention:). And, of course, J Krums and Sohaib Athar earn their place under the arc lights for reporting the landings in Hudson Bay and Abbottabad respectively.
Not one Indian tweet was considered worth taking note of. Sorry, Shashi Tharoor or Amitabh Bachchan. The folks at Twitter USofA didn’t know you yet!
Which brings me to the third reason of my confidence that Twitter India has placed via Rajinikanth. Readers of the parent’s filing were promised enhanced sales and marketing efforts in Australia, Britain, Ireland and The Netherlands. And bets on “user growth rate” speeding past what’s going on in the United States (which is Twitter’s prime market at present) are taken on Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, South Africa, and…hold your breath…even Saudi Arabia!
Not one among 1.2 billion of us seemed to have promoted a product or service worth a mention or screenshot. The folks at Wheat Thins did. There was #MustHaveWheatThins. So w2as Oreo with ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ Even someone called Bonobos got boasting rights for selling $-49 Chinos. So did chef Marco Batali for engaging. Our creative marketers appeared hung up in the Old World!
Now there is @superstarrajini. And Twitter India’s Rishi Jaitley - you’re forgiven!
(The columnist works at the intersect of strategy, media and regulation on RIl. The views are personal. Tweets @therohitbansal).