Song of Kolaveri D and Viral Marketing

These days most Sri Lankans are speaking, even trying to imitate the song of “Kolaveri D (Why This Murderous Rage, Girl)” and even at work. We now have a Sinhala version of this as well. What is this song? It’s a song which was released on 16 November, and it instantly became viral on social networking sites for its quirky ‘Tanglish’ (Tamil and English) lyrics.

(it happens to be an Indian song from the soundtrack of the upcoming Tamil film Three, due for release in 2012).This is like Singlish (Sinhala and English) in a Sri Lankan sense, especially popular   among generation Y (people who were born during the period of 1977-1994 are referred as Generation Y. This generation is considered incredibly sophisticated in relation to technology as well). See the lyrics of the song.

yo boys i am singing song

soup song

flop song

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

rhythm correct

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

maintain please

why this kolaveri..di



distance la moon-u moon-u

moon-u  color-u  white-u

white background night-u nigth-u

night-u color-u black-u



why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di



white skin-u girl-u girl-u

girl-u heart-u black-u

eyes-u eyes-u meet-u meet-u

my future dark



why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di



maama notes eduthuko

apdiye kaila snacks eduthuko

pa pa paan pa pa paan pa pa paa pa pa paan

sariya vaasi

super maama ready

ready 1 2 3 4



whaa wat a change over maama

ok maama now tune change-u



kaila glass

only english..



hand la glass

glass la scotch

eyes-u full-aa tear-u

empty life-u

girl-u come-u

life reverse gear-u

lovvu lovvu

oh my lovvu

you showed me bouv-u

cow-u cow-u holi cow-u

i want u hear now-u

god i m dying now-u

she is happy how-u



this song for soup boys-u

we dont have choice-u



why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri d



Especially after reading the following phase, you will see this is a kind of song with more Tanglish and simplicity and humor in the lyrics

white skin-u girl-u girl-u

girl-u heart-u black-u

eyes-u eyes-u meet-u meet-u

my future dark

What is the meaning of Kolaveri Di?  Since the song is sung by a drunk dumped by a girl, the song Why this Kolaveri di means Why did you do this to me or Why you dumped me. Otherwise the word Kolaveri means ‘rage.’ The song was written and sung by Dhanush and composed by music director Anirudh Ravichander, and every day it breaks a record!  

Within a week of the official release of the video, it received more than 1.3 million views on YouTube, more than 1 million shares on Facebook, while trending in India on Twitter the whole time. The song is also a hit among non-Tamilians, apparently due to the Tanglish lyrics.

By 30 November it had more than 10,500,000 YouTube views. The song became the top downloaded song on mobile with 2,10,000 downloads within the first 18 days of release. On 24 November, this song became the first Tamil film song to be premiered on a national music channel, MTV India .The song had achieved 16 million hits on YouTube as of 5 December 2011.

Even most universities study the success story of this with viral marketing. What is viral marketing? Viral marketing is referred to as a marketing technique that use pre-existing social networks to produce an increase in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives.

It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the internet. The main objective of  marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.

Workshop sessions as well as discussions have been organised to discuss the song at different universities. The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) one of the leading education institute (one of IIM of Ahmedabad is the only Indian institute listed by The Economist on its 2010 full time MBA ranking and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A) ranked amongst the top most business schools in India and Asia) conducted and are conducting some discussions on this. Even recently in IIM Ahmedabad there was an hour-long discussion between the professor and students of that class. The video on this session has also been uploaded on a social networking site according to Harsh Raj, a student of IIM Ahmedabad.

Most of the Professors of IIMs - Bangalore, Rohtak and Lucknow - have played the song in class and reflected the strategies played including viral marketing. Recently, the marketing club of IIM Ranchi organised a seminar on campus to study the strategy that has turned this number into an overnight rage.

This song and popularity of this song through social media can be considered a message reiterating the power of creativity and innovation with the essence of new technology. It is truly an internet generation who articulated the fashion and tends in the world.  This song has popular even in USA where it was in the top ten Trends on 26 November. The popularity again is attributed to the widespread reach of Social Media and an extensive network of Indians in these countries, who are all using various social networking sites to stay connected. Kolaveri di is the perfect example of viral marketing and it is a good case study for many companies to learn on “How to used social media with creativity”. Because in creativity we do not have any boundaries!