The Bengaluru duo handle all social media content of the Bengaluru City Police

When you meet young entrepreneurs Chethan Hiremath and Deeraj Gowda , the men behind the social-media makeover that the Bengaluru City Police pages have got, the first impression that you get from their camaraderie is that they have known each other for a lifetime. They even live together. But as it turns out, this friendship-cum-business partnership is less than a year old.

THE TWAIN MEET

Chethan tells us, “As people who deal with social media , it is interesting that we met on Snapchat. I was working on a project and needed a new logo and one of the many responses I got was from Deeraj. I liked his design and that’s how we started working together.” The twist in the story here is that Deeraj was, at the time, pursuing his passions in graphic designing and photography, having quit a cozy DRDO aeronautical software developer job. “I had just started my own firm when we met. But after a few discussions we realized that our views were similar and got together,” adds Deeraj.

Initially, the duo catered to a lot of F&B clients, given that Chethan has a flourishing event management firm to his credit. “But then, one day we realized that none of it was really worth our time. It was as boring as a 9-5 job, just delivering what the client wants — put up some posts and get some likes. They didn’t really want to drive content, which is our strength. Which is when we decided to let go of all our clients and refocus our energy on the big league,” says Chethan.

BENGALURU POLICE ONBOARD

One of the biggest clients that this eight-month-old partnership has bagged is the Bengaluru City Police. “Technology is the future and we had read a couple of articles in which Bengaluru City Commissioner Praveen Sood had spoken about his plans in this direction. We knew that if we had impress him and reason why social media should rank high in the scheme of things. It was the perfect opportunity. We sent out a message on their Facebook page, about how miserable they were faring in the online space, while the ground reality was far from it. People didn’t really care what the police were doing. We explained that there are two things that work phenomenally online — negativity and humour — and that we understand both well. We told them that the only way forward would be to get an agency to handle this. We didn’t exactly pitch it for ourselves, but said that we would love to do it for them,” explains Chethan.

The duo didn’t expect to hear from the city cops, as they have their own social-media team led by MG Nagendra Kumar , DCP Command Centre, which has been doing a good job. “They had about five lakh followers on both Twitter and Facebook all by themselves. Yet, within days of our message, we got a call from them. Initially, they weren’t ready to outsource and wanted us to help with ideation and work from their premises,” says Chethan. Deeraj adds, “We showed them posters and memes around drunk driving and no-honking and explained that the only way to reach out to the younger generation is through what they like doing. Most relationships today are about tagging each other on social media and we thought that memes are the best platform to communicate ideas. And it worked well. Praveen Sood was impressed and then gave us the job”

THE GAME PLAN

Having followed memes over the past 4-5 years, Deeraj says that they have their finger on the pulse and know what is ‘in’ and will trend. “We try to inculcate that meme with a message; that’s how the Game of Thrones and Pablo Escobar memes came about. We blended humour with social messages, without diluting the image that the Bengaluru Police has. Whatever content they have, we find a creative way to put it across. Initially they were reporting stuff, like, for instance, ‘Today we caught a robber’. Who cares? People think that it is their duty. But when we involved a bit of humour to say the same thing, people started paying attention,” says Deeraj, adding that the duo have contests among themselves about who comes up with the better idea and who gets maximum shares and likes.

But given the seriousness of the job, posts go online only after they are vetted by Nagendra Kumar. “Every single post goes through him and a lot does get shot down. We understand pop culture, so there is a lot of convincing that has to be done, and if you reason well, they will accept,” says Chethan.

