BENGALURU: If you’ve visited Bengaluru City Police’s (BCP) Facebook page recently, you ought to have noticed the witty, pop-culture-esque memes they’re using to highlight various issues. From Game of Thrones (GoT) to Harry Potter to good old piquant memes on issues such as drinking and driving, driving without a helmet, drugs and, of course, the bane of the city, traffic.
We caught up with Chethan Hiremath, one of the duo behind the revamping of BCP’s social media account, and he spoke to us about how their company, which is just a few months old, has now entered the “major leagues.”
It all started on social media
Deeraj Gowda and Chethan Hiremath met on Snapchat while on a work assignment. Before that, Chethan earned his living organizing parties across the city through his company Groove Ok Please and Deeraj worked as junior scientist with the Defence Research and Development Organisation. The two, both in their twenties, then realized that they shared a lot of similar ideas and decided to start Crowd Kart.
“Initially, we had 11 clients, all from the F&B industry (mostly friends). But this wasn’t challenging enough for us. So we revamped Crowd Kart and decided to enter the major leagues, despite being a startup,” says Chethan.
Talking about how the BCP gig came about, Chethan says, “We had just found out about BCP’s social media activities, and we were very excited for them. After going through several posts and analysing trends and engagement, we knew what we could do to make their accounts even better. So we sent them a message on Facebook. That’s how it all began.”
The head of the BCP’s social media team then got in touch with them and they met a few times. After about six weeks and numerous discussions, Deeraj and Chethan were on board.
Memes and more
Chethan says that though their job is definitely more than just a 9-5 gig, it’s 10,000 times more fun than what they were doing before. “Most of our time goes in concept and strategy. We come up with creative content, which is our biggest strength. We have anywhere between two hours a day to 25 hours a day - whatever it takes to deliver hits,” says Chethan.
Chethan says that the majority of people connected to the BCP via social media are between the ages of 18-30, but initially, even this age group wasn’t active on their pages. “This is why we decided to use current trends and pop culture references to make public service announcements. It’s safe to say BCP’s social media pages are amongst the most engaging pages in our country,” says Chethan.
‘Bengaluru police are amazing to work with’
Chethan Hiremath and Deeraj Gowda say that they enjoy working with the city police, the troublemakers are online -- the trolls. The duo meet the BCP’s in-house social media team twice each week, but are in constant touch with them. Every Monday, they meet Praveen Sood, commissioner, Bengaluru City Police, to present their progress report. He adds that the energy and momentum they gain after a single meeting with him is incredible. Chethan says that the BCP are the most amazing and supportive people to work with, adding that they are highly misunderstood.
“Once we sat down and explained our digital strategy to them, they have been nothing but supportive, only making corrections when required,” says Chethan. He says that the only hurdle they’ve faced is people putting up upsetting comments on their posts about the BCP, and that regardless of their good work, people still say hateful things. However, Chethan says that Deeraj and him are glad that they’ve done a fairly good job of changing people’s opinions of the police force.
About the future of the BCP’s social media posts Chethan says, “We have a lot of ideas for the BCP, but it’s not right for us to comment on their digital plans at the moment. We are yet to discuss a few of those ideas with the BCP and get approvals. It will all be out soon, and you’ll love it - that we can assure you.”