Recent Zomato Creatives & the outrage around it.

#Zomato Campaign - The recent creatives by Zomato highlighting " M.C / B.C " drew lot of flak not only from the public but also from the marketing and media fraternity. They tried to be cool in the creative and tried to use the daily lingo of the "cool" youth that they were trying to attract. I will withhold my personal opinion on what I felt about the creative but lets delve on the larger issue. What defines cool ?

In the last 3 years, thanks to youtube, there were 2 content creators that rose to stardom and became a part of pop culture. AIB ( All India Bakchod) and TVF ( The Viral factory ). To an extent that, not only did they have young India eating out of their hands but also the biggest stars of Bollywood from SRK to Alia Bhatt obliging them with creating content and giving no holds barred interviews. And within the media & entertainment community, they have achieved rockstar status! Ask anyone in the world of brands, marketing, media planning and buying today both AIB & TVF define "cool" & "pop culture" within the young TG(millennials) in India.Whilst the funniness and humour in their content is undoubted, a large part of their humour is dependent on the generous usage of MC/BC in their content. (I have seen all their videos and hence am making this statement ). In fact I am tempted to state that if you take the MC/BC and the liberal dose of swearing out of their videos, their humour will fall flat. But kidding you not, the marketing community swears by AIB & TVF. And given the reach that these content creators have across Youtube, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook, MC / BC has reached cult status amongst the young.

Now to the outrage. I read about a lot of outrage that this campaign caused and it being dissed by the who's who of the marketing & media community. And here's the irony. These are the same folks that have been applauding AIB / TVF , buying tickets for their shows and doing business with them for their brands. And yet I have not seen any outrage against the cuss words that they use liberally in their content. In fact they seem to enjoy that the most (Ref : the AIB roast that is self explanatory)

So here' the question and the debate. How does the usage of cuss words like MC/BC make AIB/TVF cool and the same when its used by Zomato becomes outrage worthy. What point am I missing here? All Zomato tried to do was try to use some part of the normal youth lingo to create a perception of creating cool communication which backfired on them but imagine if the same "MC/BC" were to be used on a campaign by AIB/TVF to communicate their latest piece of content, would it cause the same outrage? I think not.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Cheers!

Mandar Natekar.