Airtel ‘Friends Mania’ takes over Sri Lanka

The video of the performance of Sri Lanka’s first flash mob consisting of over 60 dancers, performing to Airtel’s signature ‘friends’ song, at the Fort Railway Station which drew in huge crowds, has been viralled everywhere and within 24 hours has received 10,000+ YouTube views across multiple channels and is fast on its way to becoming one of the most viewed clips in Sri Lanka.

On facebook the commercial and song has been received with similar enthusiasm with the competition for the most popular “friend type” on the Airtel Life page (www.airtel.lk/friends) currently seeing 907 entries from 531 entrants. The current leader on the leaderboard (Knightz Mrocks) has received 7408 votes for his friend type ‘Paan batta,’ and is on his way to being this week’s winner of an iPod Touch.

Several request shows on TV and Radio stations too have been inundated with requests to play the song and has been picked up by three TV stations.

The tune has spread fast across Sri Lanka with people humming it in corridors, wash rooms, busses, company lobbies etc and a rush been seen among the youth to learn the lyrics and sing along every time the tune is heard. And the tune is ‘Hamma friendama wadhagath machan,’ released by Bharti Airtel Lanka hot on the heels of the campaign’s launch across India.

The commercial uses a series of visuals to depict the different types of friends, young people have, be it their best friends, casual friends, facebook friends, neighbourhood friends, movie buddies and how they interact with each of these friends in different ways and the lyrics too are based on typical conversations that youth may have daily. The language used in the commercial has been picked up by all popular chat rooms.

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. The company offers 3G voice and data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national and international long distance services to carriers in India.