MUMBAI: Holi, the festival of colours, is about fun, frolic, yearning for home and reaching out to your friends, families and loves ones. At the same time, the festival is an occasion for brands to launch varied campaigns to remind their consumers and users that they are a part of their big family. While some of these campaigns focus on giving a certain message to the viewers, there are a few that bypass the sermons and simply add to the fiesta called Holi – a festival associated with playfulness, dance and music.
One such campaign was hosted this Holi by VMate, which is a trending short video platform. The Holi campaign, titled #VMateAsliHolibaaz, broke away from the norms of brand promotion on a festival, and hence its appeal was not confined to just the host platform. While the short video platform formally roped in top YouTubers Bhuvan Bam and Ashish Chanchlani, and popular dancer Sapna Chaudhary, for a short movie and a music video, several other online stars from other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube became a part of the same.
A Holi song featuring Sapna Chaudhary went viral and was widely shared across different social media platforms. Noted choreographer Melvin Louis, YouTube/TikTok sensations Awez Darbar and Aadil Khan even performed on the song and posted their videos on their respective platforms. Let’s take a look at the performances by these brilliant dancers:
Melvin Louis
Awez Darbar:
Aadil Khan:
Several Instagram influencers too joined the bandwagon. Popular actresses and Insta influencers such as Priyanka Khera, Shefali Bagga, Ankita Sharma and Priyamvada Kant took to their profiles to share videos performing on the song.
A similar buzz was created around the short movie featuring YouTubers Bhuvan and Ashish. Some of the most famous YouTubers of the country, namely CarryMinati, So Effin Cray, 2 Foreigners In Bollywood and We Are One talked about the movie in their videos. They also expressed their excitement about a contest where users were invited by the short video platform to vote for their favourite YouTuber between Bhuvan and Ashish.
And as the campaign gained traction across different social media boards, it also triggered interesting comments from people. While the comments were mostly about fans vouching for their favourite YouTuber, a number of them were happy about the fact that they would get to see Bhuvan and Ashish perform together for the first time. Of course, there were some hilarious ones in the list too. A user named Gaurav Sharma wrote: “Me when I was a kid: ABCDEFGHI…JKL…; today’s kids: Hello VMate…V M A T E”, referring to Sapna’s Holi video. Popular Bollywood rapper Badshah also took to Instagram and equated the duo of Bhuvan and Ashish with ‘Modi-Trump’. Another Facebook user, AalshiSah termed the contest as the ‘world cup of online comedy’.
The campaign further gave ammo to users to create some hilarious memes. One such meme was posted by Bhuvan’s fan Shivam Gupta. The photograph in the meme is that of southern superstar Rajinikanth, who is on a call, and the text alongside says, “Kyu, Hila Daala Na”. Another one by a user named Amit Goel read, “Corona virus: I am getting the most attention. VMate: Oh really?”. One of the users shared a snapshot of the Chatur Ramalingam character from 3Idiots movie. The text on meme read: “promotion karna koi inseseekhe, seekheinse”.
The campaign by the short video platform received around 2 billion impressions through different social media platforms and YouTube.
