Over the years, South Indians have been shown, stereotypically, as dark-skinned, lungi-wearing, sporting heavy accents, all speaking the same indiscernible incomprehensible language, which cannot be further from the truth. The South is rife with culture, and their contribution to the arts is often overlooked by mainstream media when painting them with the same brush.

Netflix wanted to announce their commitment to telling more local authentic stories in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada - languages of the South and truly represent the nuances of the regions. The brief was open and expectations were high. And as is the case with most music videos, the biggest challenges were a tight budget and an even tighter timeline.

The objective was to create hype for Netflix's new commitment!

‘Namma’ translates to ‘our’ in Kannada and Tamil, and is a term often used endearingly to refer to things we have an emotional attachment to, and to memories we speak of with pride. In this project that we set to create, we wanted that sense of nostalgia, and endearment to be reflected, and thus was born ‘Namma (our) Stories’

Given that 72% of the OTT audience prefers to watch content in their native languages, we wanted them to see their stories represented authentically.

The anthem featured 4 prominent South Indian artists performing in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam about the contributions of their region to art and culture, all woven together seamlessly to create a sense of storytelling, all the while shattering the existing stereotype of South India.

The crux of this music video is simple yet powerful - storytelling. We all grow up with stories, some told to us, some we tell others, some we see on screen. With this music video, we brought to the forefront stories from Southern India - childhood tales, films and pop culture, or the story of a household, a community, a city. We left the interpretation to each rapper and packaged it in a manner that highlights each rapper's style, expression and city/language of representation. The storytelling was idiosyncratic & linear as each artist passed the mic forward, celebrating, educating and busting stereotypes along the way.

Through the visual language, we stayed away from stereotypes that the south is typically depicted by, and incorporated the home pride, pizzazz and flair that each artist represented. We consciously also included hat-tips to the vast and rich culture of storytelling.

We turned this video around in 3 weeks! With a 50 member crew, we worked around the clock to produce and shoot this video in record time. We worked with the artists on the track composition while simultaneously planning the shoot.

To give a sense of personal tales being told, we extensively researched each artist’s background, their culture and specific stories that they wanted to tell. We came up with a different visual theme for each artist rooted in the same celebration of local storytelling. Local inspirations and influences were added to each setup which reflected that region’s proud storytelling traditions. Like gossip as a part of oral storytelling culture at local addas (neighbourhood hangouts) of Karnataka, fusion of the western world and South India and different art styles coming to life.

The video was released on Netflix India's social handles (YouTube and Twitter).

The song struck a chord with the audience, with several people commenting on the Youtube video about their mother tongue and their own stories being showcased with much pride.

Shashi Tharoor, a Member of Parliament from South India with over 8million followers on Twitter, shared a tweet in praise of the video.

The song was streamed 1.3 Million times on Spotify, the video garnered 36.6 Million impressions and 7.8 Million views, and received over 16000 comments. Reaction videos to the song have garnered upwards of 2 Million views whereas dance covers have added 1 Million views to the mix.