Social Media Genius

If you haven’t heard of the “Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai” movement, you’ve either kept yourself really busy or you are age 40 and above.

It’s no secret that the youth of this nation, and the global nation that exists now thanks to the expanding borders of the internet, are quite lukkha (having a lot of time on their hands that they use un-productively). This and the fact that they also love being a part of any sort of “movement” - this maybe due to a human need to ‘have a purpose’ or just due to the fact that people feel more and more validated by being a part of a larger cause, makes the youth a perfect demographic to experiment with.

This experiment has been perfectly executed by the “Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai” doula, AIB’s PR people.

They first saw the 14th Feb, Valentine’s Day, eye-rolls that happen every year. They then saw the number of those eye-rolls and their hearts started racing - there has to be a way to capitalise this. Creating an event on Facebook on 1st Feb for the 14th, for the single people to not only embrace ‘self-love’ but to also diss love, they started a snowball. Come oh-single-and-lonely-people, who are never made the front liners on any day, especially on Valentines day, and shout PEDH with us on the 14th of Feb at so-and-so location at so-and-so time. We will combine our energies and have some fun - harmless.

Oh wait. The number of people confirming their attendance is beginning to shock the hosts! Single people, not single people, people who wish they were single, married, divorced, children, spurned, burned and asexual! They all wanted a piece of this pie. Holy s**tballs. 

“The pyaaar ek dhoka hai event is…a thing now. Have to plan this evening. Can’t believe thousands are going to actually gather and yell out pyaaar ek dhoka hai.” Is what Tanmay Bhat (AIB) tweeted on the 3rd of Feb. They were surprised at the response, we were surprised at the growing feeling that this was not just a crummy joke anymore.

Spoiler Alert :  The event was a resounding success. There were 5000 people who attended the event at 7pm on the 14th of Feb and they all had a blast. There was chanting and slogans being yelled out. There was stand up comedy performances by popular people in the circuit - maybe doing AIB a favour or maybe they were being paid for it, I'll never know. But the event was a free event!! Can you believe it?! So AIB made no money from the attending audience.

Ah! But in every ecology there is more than just what the end-users see, ain’t it? Before we knew how big this thing was becoming, we started seeing branding. The PEDH logo was the universal ‘friend-zone’ sign - half a heart and thumbs up. 

There were tee-shirts with various designs relating to the PEDH theme by multiple companies. Of course, social media hashtags and memes, shares, likes and comments were happening already so god knows how much money was made via that alone. Then we saw brand deals - Ola prime play jumped in, zomato had some fun with it as well. A few stories showed up on Terribly Tiny Tales about how singleton is amazeballs with the PEDH hashtag. There is even a freakin’ PEDH Anti Valentines game available to download for free on mobile devices!!!! WHAT!!! 

If all this wasn’t a showcasing of how successful this movement had become, AIB released a mash-up video called “AIB : Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai - After Movie 2018” which had the various groups across the world who had gathered and organised rallies of this slogan being yelled out. Some slogans were really creative, I have to admit! 

There were two moments during this entire saga that really stood out for me in the realisation that this is pure social media mastery at work. One was when on the 13th of Feb, Tanmay Bhat wrote that there were over 100 million impressions in this campaign! That has to be some record. For those not in the know, a Google search says that an “‘impression’, sometimes called a view or an ad view, is a term that refers to the point in which an ad is viewed once by a visitor, or displayed once on a web page. The number of impressions of a particular advertisement is determined by the number of times the particular page is located and loaded.” 

The second moment was when another member of AIB, Rohan Joshi put up an insta story, which self destructs in 24 hours so there is no evidence of this and I could be totally making this up so deal with it, in which he credited the PR guys at AIB saying something to the effect of ‘please don’t quit AIB to start/ join a political party because the thought of that is scary’ - mainly because they really do understand the pulse of the youth and can you imagine what will happen if they use this superpower for evil?

Dear lukkha youth,

Please get jobs. I now truly understand why unemployment is SUCH an important factor in the growth of the economy.

Humbly,
Not a youth anymore, clearly, coz I didn’t get drawn into this. Plus I don’t fully understand it even after writing this. KTHXBAI. #PEDH