Thaikkudam Bridge
Client | Thaikkudam Bridge
Organisation | Aum-i Artistes
My Role | Brand Positioning, Creative Strategy, Community Building, Campaign Management
How can we use strategic storytelling to launch a neighbourhood rock band into the eyes of the mainstream?
Preface.
Thaikkudam Bridge is a prominent Indian rock band, formed in 2013 by Govind Vasantha (a leading composer whose filmography includes critically acclaimed OSTs such as ‘96’, ‘North 24 Kaatham’ and ‘Njan Steve Lopez’) and friends. Lacking a distinct brand position that reflected their musicianship and ethos, Thaikkudam Bridge partnered with Aum-i Artistes as its agency of record (AOR) in 2014, to collaborate on a refreshed creative strategy that aligned with their sound and worldview, and would turn things around for the band.
Over the course of an 8-week insight journey, I worked closely with the band to get a clear understanding of who they are, how they work, their vision for the future, and what is most important to them.
To develop a strategic bedrock for the campaign, I also looked into the audience, the culture and the category, and the challenge we’d set ourselves — zooming in to observe the band as closely as possible, and then standing back to see what we think will have the biggest impact on how Thaikkudam Bridge, the brand, shows up in the world.
Insights.
By doing so, we learnt three key things that helped to define their brand position.
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Although the independent music scene in India was exploding with new talent, there was still room for a headliner act that would take things to the next level. Thaikkudam Bridge's potential to make original music for the world wasn't made visible yet. So we leaned in on the idea of ‘building on the now to deliver what’s next’.
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Having gone instantly viral with their cover versions of iconic regional songs, Thaikkudam Bridge was already huge among fans in India. But what truly supercharged them was their capacity to draw fans of different genres from all over the world. For the first time in India, here was a non-mainstream band that broke barriers of taste and terrain. This had to be highlighted.
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Composed of musicians who come from every corner of the country, with a wide range of musical tastes and capabilities, the band symbolised the universality in the local. They were building a bridge between different worlds, and yet, this aspect of their DNA was only seen through one-off performances when in reality, it was a driving force for the band.
We needed to highlight this aspect of ‘world-class with a touch of local familiarity’.
A huge ensemble band composed of 18 members across genres and ages (including Govind’s father, 60 at the time) had one unifying origin story: in one way or another, they all came together to make music in a real neighbourhood in Kochi called Thaikkudam Bridge.
The now-iconic bridge.
The logo design took that origin story and used the visual ephemera of the now-iconic ‘bridge’ that continues to grace every artwork and merch item along with being a go-to reference for fan tattoos. The organic curvature and contrasting geometric forms lends the band a distinctive look while evoking a sense of rhythm and journey.
‘Be the bridge.’
It was the backstory of the bridge bringing all these diverse musicians together that inspired the brand position ‘Be the bridge.’ — a sentiment that celebrates music as a bridge between people who might otherwise have little else in common.
As the Creative Head in charge of building the brand from the ground up, I approached this motif as the primary expression of the band: from stills and music videos to artwork and promos for TV, radio and socials.
Tone + Timing.
We needed to nail both timing and tone in order to churn out a distinct campaign roll-out strategy. My role was to help the design team stretch the creative expression in all possible directions, and make sure that the ideas behind ‘Be The Bridge’ were tailored specifically to the channels in which they appear.
Campaign strategy.
For instance, :30 and :15 cutdowns of music videos were posted Instagram Stories using the ‘tap’ feature to move between scenes in the video. Likewise, we made concert ads unskippable on Facebook and YouTube by introducing standout LIVE moments at the beginning of each clip, before revealing the gig details. We looked for every opportunity to express the #BeTheBridge brand and add youthful energy to the band’s creatives and fan interactions, from cheeky BTS clips and GIF hover states — even a few hidden photos of the bandmates from their teenage years.
We didn’t just think of the core concept, we were the creative force behind Thaikkudam Bridge, responsible for content, production, community, merch, et al.
Results.
Upon launch, the band’s videos on YouTube and socials generated a 9.5x lift in engagement (100M+ total views on YouTube alone), a 6x lift in organic traffic, and a 30% lift in conversion (ticket sales). All to the tune of an unprecedented 8% weekly jump in TV ratings for Kappa Originals, the channel that launched the videos online, consistently showing up contextually in all of the promotional material.
Eyes of the mainstream.
The views kept spiking, helping to generate millions of engagements from both musicians and fans all over the world e.g., we tracked over 50,000 unique Instagram posts with the #BeTheBridge hashtag within the first two weeks.
This was just the beginning. Thaikkudam Bridge's success caught the attention of globally renowned musicians such as AR Rahman and Metallica. To this day, they remain one of India’s most popular rock bands of all time.
