BOMAN KOHINOOR, the owner of Mumbai’s iconic Britannia & Co restaurant, had a long-cherished dream of meeting the British royal family. A self-professed fan of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the 93-year-old Parsi restaurateur finally got his wish fulfilled when he got an opportunity to catch up with the royal couple during their visit to the country recently. Although Kohinoor was hoping to invite the royal couple and serve them his legendary ‘chicken berry pulao’ at his over 90-year-old eatery in Ballard Estate, he was instead given an audience for an unscheduled meeting at The Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai.
Call it the power of the Internet or the efficacy of viral campaigns. The royal rendezvous was made possible after a video, in which Kohinoor proclaims himself “the royal family’s fan number 1” and invites William and Kate to his restaurant for a meal, went viral within two days of its launch. The video, as part of the initiative, #WillKatMeetMe, has received over 2.25 lakh views so far and counting, on platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Brightcove.
It all started when Conde Nast Traveller India, aware of Kohinoor’s long-standing fondness for the royal family, asked him about his thoughts on William and Kate’s impending visit to India. After he expressed a desire to meet them, the travel magazine created a video for him (which showed Kohinoor holding a placard saying #WillKatMeetMe) and uploaded it on its website, hoping for a miracle. And the rest, as we know now, is history.
“This was a beautiful story of an old man we’ve been meeting for years, a story we felt we had to tell. And once we put it up, the Internet took over and drove the campaign purely out of love. There was no gratification, no contest. Readers from across the world shared the story across social media only to make this man’s dream come true. Even today, Kohinoor doesn’t understand why or how thousands of people did what they did. It shows the power of technology to make good things happen,” says Divia Thani Daswani, editor, Conde Nast Traveller.
Kohinoor’s is not a one-off case. There have been several online campaigns in the recent past—initiatives in which the Internet brought about a colossal change or helped people achieve the unthinkable. These viral campaigns were not created with the motive of selling a product or service, or promoting a brand. They were built on a ‘human connect’ and had the power to strike an emotional chord with the masses.
Last year, in a video posted on YouTube, a five-year-old Bahraini girl Suzanne Ahmed Khan aka Suzi was seen crying her heart out after watching Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The video, in which Suzi sobs inconsolably and says, “I love him (Salman Khan)”, went viral in two days.
Suzi was in luck. Later, on Twitter, the 50-year-old actor said he loved her too. And the grapevine has it that he meant it. As per reports, Suzi has now been cast in the actor’s work-in-progress Sultan. She is believed to have been cast as actress Anushka Sharma’s younger self in the film. Khan reportedly thinks the little girl looks very much like Sharma.
The virality of social media can be overwhelming, particularly for its producers, says social activist Nityanand Jayaraman in a media report. Jayaraman is part of the Justice Rocks Initiative that produced a rap video titled Kodaikanal Won’t sung by Sofia Ashraf in 2015. The video soon became viral. Chennai-born rapper Ashraf’s song, which has raked in over 1.9 million views so far and counting, throws light on the mercury contamination created by consumer goods behemoth Hindustan Unilever’s thermometer assembly plant at Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu. The contamination has been adversely affecting the workers, the forests and the groundwater. Following protests by the Kodaikanal-based Palni Hills Conservation Council and the Tamil Nadu Alliance Against Mercury and Greenpeace, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board had ordered the factory to close down for having violated the Environmental Protection Act.
Unilever was asked to clean up all the mercury in the soil, too, and compensate the workers for the medical expenses they had to incur while working with the toxic waste. It’s been 15 years since the factory was shut down in 2001, but Unilever is yet to clean up the toxic mercury dumped by it, nor has it compensated the workers.
But after the viral video, the company reportedly spoke to the media, and even put up a note on its website clarifying their stand about its thermometer factory. “The debatable claims of the note aside, the fact that Unilever chose to break its silence is refreshing,” adds Jayaraman.
Similarly, it took just two days for comedy group AIB to rack up nearly 10 lakh views for its video on ‘Save the Internet’. The nine-minute video posted by AIB on April 11, 2015, explains why net neutrality is essential for India. The video became an instant hit and started trending on social media, with a lot of celebrities, including actor Shah Rukh Khan, tweeting about it.
It was removed temporarily from Facebook because it was being shared so rapidly that the social network’s algorithm apparently mistook it for spam. The problem, however, was corrected later.
By April 24, 2015, the last date on which people could send in responses to some 20-odd questions asked by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India regarding issues concerning net neutrality, 11 lakh Indians had emailed, urging it to stop telecom companies from indulging in differential pricing.
A year earlier, in 2014, comedy group East India Comedy (EIC) created a video (it shows a teacher struggling with a government-approved syllabus during a mock sex education class), which went on to make a lot of noise among Internet users in the country. EIC’s video mocked remarks on then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan’s website, suggesting that the “so-called sex education” should be banned.
Vardhan was also quoted as saying the use of condoms sends a wrong message that “you can have any kind of illicit sexual relationship, but as long as you’re using a condom, it’s fine”.
Later, Vardhan clarified he was only opposed to the ‘adolescent education programme’, which was introduced by the UPA government in 2007, and was subsequently modified. The programme is not mandatory, but it has been banned by several Indian states.
* Boman Kohinoor, a 93-year-old Mumbai restaurateur, got his long-cherished dream of meeting the British royal family fulfilled when Prince William and Kate Middleton, during their recent trip to India, caught up with him, thanks to a video of him that went viral within two days
* A rap video made by Chennai-born singer Sofia Ashraf in 2015 on the Kodaikanal toxic waste contamination became viral, forcing Unilever to finally come out and address the incident that occurred way back in 2001
* In July 2014, comedy group East India Comedy released a video on sex education in India after then health minister Harsh Vardhan suggested a ban on it. He withdrew his statement after the video went viral
* A Bahraini five-year-old girl, has bagged a role in the Salman Khan-starrer Sultan after her video in which she cries her heart out for the Bollywood superstar in 2015 went viral
* On April 11, 2015, comedy group AIB released a video campaign in favour of net neutrality and urged people to #SaveTheInternet. In response, some 11 lakh-odd Indians emailed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, urging it to stop telecom companies from indulging in differential pricing
