I have just been baptized into the fascinating world of Social Media. I have started taking my little tweedle steps and like most kids, I am simply drooling over the candies hanging in several tweets, hungrily devouring all I could and sharing hesitantly what I have to offer to the big Tweeterati. All this seemed exciting untill a mail came from Twitter.
Pepsi The Game (PepsiTheGame) is now following your tweets on Twitter.
I didnt know how to react. I began to feel a little pride, when I wondered how a famous brand like Pepsi could begin to take me and my tweets seriously and could follow me. While the feeling of pride welled up, I could sense a little repulsiveness over the bad taste Pepsi has often left my mouth with, both literally and metaphorically, on various fronts. I've never been impressed by the idea of Youngistaan.
Few random searches in Google made me aware that after the( in)famous Marlboro Country(depending on which side of the story you stood for), Pepsi is trying to do the same by creating this fictional country. The song track depicting the core idea of Youngistaan sounds more like like an invitation for an utopian resort called Youngistaan, where everybody chills out and parties 24 x 7. Although it might help in creating a feel-good factor for the brand, it never really conveys the spirit of Indian Youth. And if the idea werent crassy enough, Youngistaan ka Wow looked even more ludicrous, aimed at bonding with the blogging Gen-Y Folks. No wonder, I was followed as I was a blogger. Perturbed by this provocative announcement, I felt like shouting, "Please stop following me...I really dont care about your brand and that stupid game played by Ranbir, with some cheap Indiana Jones stunts and dumb molls hanging around with a villanous buffoon with no job.
The point is simple. As long as you make trash, you are simply trash-worthy. Period." After some time, I tried composing myself, observing my bouts of negative emotions towards Pepsi. The omnipresent, cliched noise surrounding the Gen-Next Youth annoys me a lot. It seems as if every marketer in India wants to target this segment, as they find it convenient to fool around with all the schmaltz and fizz surrounding the resurgent Globalised India, just to occupy some mental space in their already crowded mindscape ! Ofcourse, its the huge disposable income at the hands of the Youth which makes them drool and come running behind! Cant they depict Gen-Next earnestly? No doubt, Gen-Next likes to party and chill out. However, he doesnt lead rosy lives, as shown often in movies, where hero is the hyper intelligent, multi tasking GOD, capable of cavorting girls, fighting gundas and cross tribulations of poverty and failure within the stretch of a 3 minute song. This is precisely the reason why any actor can never stand tall as an ambassador for Youth. Actors are only used by Lazy Marketers!
If brands are serious about finding the Gen-Next Brand Ambassador, why not go on a Nation-wide hunt to determine the smartest entrepreneur in India? Why isn't any TV producer interested in creating a GAME based on taking us through the travails of the great Indian Entrepreneur, a striking example of baptism by fire, someone, who strives to make a difference in this country!
Its high time marketers invest their brains, rather than money to understand the pulse of the Youth!