feature article on today's youth and youth icon
Answers
ANSWER
The answers would typically include youthful achievers such as Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Aamir Khan, Deepika Padukone and, in recent days, Kangana Ranaut.
Sometimes, international icons such as Michael Jackson and Diego Maradona would also feature.
But there was one answer which appeared with amazing regularity in most such surveys, and which always stood out as unique — because it was the name of an elderly man in his 70s or 80s, not an age you would normally associate with icons of college-going youth. This was APJ Abdul Kalam, scientist, teacher and 11th President of India, who passed away from our midst recently.
When he was in his mid-70s, Abdul Kalam was twice nominated for the MTV Youth Icon of the Year Award, in 2003 and 2006. Can you imagine a senior scientist and President of the country being associated with MTV Awards, and being nominated for awards by teenage viewers of this crazily young television channel?
When Kalam spoke to school or college going audiences, he would draw crowds in the thousands, who would lustily cheer the nationalistic pledges that he often made them take. Film Director Prakash Belawadi has written about how he watched in awe as over 8,000 school children once gathered spontaneously in a stadium in Bangalore, screaming and shouting, to listen to Abdul Kalam. He was no mere scientist or politician, he was India’s home-grown rock star.
Marketers would give their right and left hands to nurture brands which can consistently command such admiration amongst youth.
So, what was the secret of Abdul Kalam’s huge draw amongst Indian youth, and can brands ever hope to replicate such appeal? Perhaps brands can never generate the spontaneous fervour this man commanded.