Campaigns worth lakhs, bonanza for meme platforms as brands piggyback on Maha Kumbh

Flipkart's marketing campaign during Maha Kumbh.

With millions of views and thousands of likes, brands tapped into the virality of memes in this edition of the Maha Kumbh, which brought in the moolah for meme platforms.

From food apps, music and movie production houses to news channels, over Rs 50 crore were spent on meme marketing by brands in the last two months, pointed out Taaran Chanana, founder of meme platform MemeChat.

The platform also worked on a viral campaign for singer Kshitij Tarey’s music production company for the song titled Mahakumbh Hai sung by famous singer Kailash Kher.

The campaign for the song recorded over 30 million views, 5 million likes and comments, Chanana noted.

"MemeChat made every brand get into the trend of Maha Kumbh. We worked with over 20 brands in the last one month," he said, adding that the brief from brands was simple - "integrate and showcase the goodness, oneness of India uniting together at Maha Kumbh along with the integration of their service/product."

Another firm, Growth Jet Media, which runs meme pages worked on campaigns for more than 12 brands including Zepto, Sleepwell, Fitcure, among others.

While Archit Madaan, Co-founder of meme platform, The Indian Sarcasm, worked for over six brands on Maha Kumbh campaigns, he estimates more than 75 brands tapping into memes for their marketing campaigns around the Maha Kumbh theme.

"If an active 1 million (meme platform's social media) channel posted a marketing brief for brands, they (meme platforms) can earn up to Rs 4,000 for a reel and Rs 3,000 for a story. A meme (social media) page with 1 million followers can earn up to Rs 2 lakh to promote a campaign," he said.

He added that the cost for a full package including meme marketing, public relations, marketing pages, articles and ads in print media ranged from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 crore.

The cost is directly proportional to the number of followers a page has, Chanana said. "It is anywhere between Rs 100 to Rs 1 lakh depending on the niche, followers of a meme page."

Growth Jet Media's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Nikhil Singh Sumal said that the biggest reason to use memes for marketing during the religious event was virality.

"Meme marketing is the most viral and the most ROI (return on investment) worthy technique to go viral and Gen Z (those born between 1997–2012) and Gen Y (also known as millennials or those born between 1981 and 1997) audience is most easily accessible here (on meme pages and social media channels) in comparison to any traditional marketing technique," Madaan said.

His Flipkart campaign which was a 10-day activity on Instagram and Twitter gained over 35,000 likes, 30 million views and 5,000 comments.

"Flipkart's campaign was making sure people get their smartphone within 10 minutes if it's lost. The brief was to cover the entire activity which helped them to gain paid and organic traction, Madaan said.

He added that Blinkit and Instamart set up their stalls with all the aarti essentials like dhoop, oil, flowers available on the go, while Amazon used their packaging boxes to transform them into beds so that the visitors could rest for a while, ITC, Pepsico and Reliance set up their camp ashrams and distributed their brand's samples and refreshments.

"Maha Kumbh is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us, a lot of people didn't know the essence of it, specially Gen Z children. But memes helped every audience touch base with the biggest religious event. Memes helped people to understand the fact and the difference between a Kumbh Mela, Ardh Kumbh, Purna kumbh and Maha Kumbh. The world's biggest gathering was recorded during the Maha Kumbh and around 15 lakh international travellers also took a dip in the Triveni Sangam. All this information was floated across as a form of infotainment through memes."