Mumbai: OML Entertainment teamed with Google India for their Pani Puri Google Doodle to commemorate the widely consumed street snack dish in India: Pani Puri. The idea was to celebrate the essence of pani puri with a select few artists that added their own cultural flavour to this admired all-season snack.
As the Doodle was a game, the job at hand was to build a competitive spirit among the chosen influencers and their fans by pushing them to play the Doodle game and share their high scores - all while promoting their individual brands. In order to do so, the influencers were selected across content genres eg. Mythpat from gaming, Viraj and Vineeth from comedy, Abhijeet from the digital art space etc. and across different regions in India to represent all and any type of Pani Puri (Puchka, Gol Gappa, Gup Chup etc.) and make it as inclusive yet diverse as possible. The influencers were asked to celebrate Pani Puri (Puchka, Gol Gappa, Gup Chup etc.), to represent their local culture in a unique way that encouraged their followers to show support by playing the Pani Puri Doodle Game to garner the highest score.
The story behind this idea is that on this day in 2015, Indori Zayka and Dainik Bhaskar from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, set a world record by serving a maximum variety (51) of Pani Puris at Vidorra restaurant under the supervision of Chef Neha Shah.
Apart from being a major plot point in pop culture moments, Pani Puri can be found to have a unique name and recipe across the states of India, and with this often comes a topic of heated debates on its original name/preparation. Undoubtedly Pani Puri is an emotion in India. While it can be found throughout the country, it has also proven to be a great ice-breaker for residents of each region with its own distinct name and recipe for it, making it a source of contention - #TeamPaniPuri, #TeamPuchka, #TeamPataashe, #Team GolGappa #TeamPakodi #TeamGupChup and so on.
