It was a social media post for one of my brands, scheduled for Teachers Day. I remember discussing this topical social media post with my team debating if the content could draw some flak.

Most call-outs on the said subject consisted of a gratitude towards their teachers, professor or parents or all those who may have taught or imparted learnings and contributed in them getting where they are today in life, a standard template.

But this one was different for us; The Brand Face, Captain of the Indian Cricket Team was thanking former cricketers from across the world for all the learnings.

For those who know about cricket and India would surely understand the nature and the magnitude of eyeballs this would have garnered. It may sound cliched but Cricket is Religion in India.

Well all this sounded fine, so why were we getting hassled. It was about the content of the post and inclusions of a few cricketing greats from India’s arch-rivals Pakistan.

A team whom India has detested forever, with situation deteriorating to a no more bilateral series being played between the two countries. A country with whom India has fought many wars and several pseudo battles since Independence. A country whose name is enough to bring out the maxed patriotism in every Indian.

So here we were countries most popular face thanking a few legends from countries biggest rivals.

With a good understanding of how the sentiments of the countrymen would flow it was a certainly worth debating it out. We had options of either removing the names and moving on or allowing it be a genuine content and allow the post release and face the music.

The genuineness of the content was worthy of it leading to many a discussion and precisely the reason we wanted to go with it.

One of the important pillars of a content planning on social Media and that content being widely popular is “genuine”. There we were with a credible content.

These have become the new age problems for the brand custodians to monitor and moderate the content. How to speak, what to speak & when to speak needs a careful moderation. It needs a gaurdian to manage the communication for the social community.

Social Media is like a mob, which needs a moderation and no head room for a cause of any friction. If irked can have consequences like trolling, bad pr or impact in brand valuation.

We were cognizant of all the aforementioned and decided to go ahead with the release.

Here are some matrix to gauge the traction; Over 1.5 Mn Likes, Engagement Rate of over 15%, Coverage in over 100 publications, Trending amongst popular Teachers Day Post. Loads of love and good wishes for the brand and Virat Kohli.

No mention of anyone picking the brand or the brand face on mentioning the names from Pakistani greats. Infact we had got it all right this time.