The Dinidu campaign and the psychology behind making Sri Lanka talk
If you’ve been in Sri Lanka long enough, you already know one truth.
People don’t just watch content here. They dissect it. They investigate it. They gossip about it. Then they forward it to ten more people.
So when Dinidu reached out to me to collaborate on a marketing campaign to promote engagement rings, I knew one thing for sure.
I wasn’t going to do the usual.
No “Aneh come to Dinidu, best rings, fits every finger” type video.
That’s not marketing. That’s noise. And honestly, it’s the kind of generic influencer content that people scroll past without even processing.
Dinidu had one product in mind and he wanted traction. What I wanted was impact.
Not views. Not likes. I wanted the kind of attention that forces people to stop what they’re doing and say:
“Wait… what?”
Because in marketing, attention is currency. And the highest form of attention is not a view.
It’s a conversation.
The Goal Was Never a Video
Most influencer campaigns in Sri Lanka are obsessed with output.
Shoot a reel. Add a caption. Smile. Mention the brand. End.
But I don’t work like that.
I don’t sell content. I sell campaigns. And campaigns don’t start with posting.
They start with psychology.
So we built this collaboration the way brands rarely do here.
Like a story.
A real one.
The Teaser Phase: Weaponizing Silence
Here’s what most people don’t understand.
Sometimes the best content is no content.
For one entire week, I went silent. No uploads. No jokes. No regular Amantha behaviour.
That silence mattered because it created a vacuum.
And humans hate vacuum. They fill it with curiosity.
Then we dropped the bomb.
A full set of photos of me down on one knee proposing to Nikita, another well known and genuinely beautiful influencer.
Not one photo. Not one post.
A full believable rollout.
The type that triggers instant reactions.
And we didn’t stop there.
To make it feel real, we had my friends take “random” pictures from their own phones so we could post it on stories too.
Because that’s the trick.
People don’t trust polished content. They trust what looks accidental.
That’s what sells the reality.
For a few days, we let Sri Lanka run with it.
No explanations. No clarifications. No hints.
Just pure chaos.
What I Wanted Sri Lanka to Do
Before the campaign even started, I told myself: if this is going to work, I need to engineer three types of reactions.
Not one.
Three.
1. Congratulations and blessings
2. Suspicion and marketing detectives saying “This has to be an ad”
3. Gossip, theories, and mess
“Amantha was dating someone else.” “Can’t be, wasn’t Nikita with someone?” “Is this real?” “This feels staged.” “Bro no way.”
That third one is extremely important.
Because the third one is where virality lives.
People don’t share happiness. They share shock.
They share confusion. They share drama.
Sri Lanka doesn’t forward love stories. Sri Lanka forwards tea.
So yes, we designed the campaign in a way where gossip was not a side effect.
It was the fuel.
The Reveal: Turning Curiosity Into Conversion
A few days later, we revealed the truth.
It was an advertisement.
Dinidu engagement rings.
And here’s why it worked.
Because by the time we revealed it, we had already achieved the hardest thing in marketing.
We had the entire country emotionally involved.
When people believe something is real, they don’t behave like an audience.
They behave like participants.
They comment like they know you. They fight in your replies. They take screenshots. They create theories. They share it on WhatsApp groups.
And once content enters WhatsApp, it’s no longer content.
It becomes culture.
Results That Prove Strategy Beats “Content”
Within 24 hours, the campaign hit:
800,000 views Over 7,000 shares 500+ comments
And the best part is, it wasn’t even because the ring was shown beautifully.
It was because the story was executed brilliantly.
That’s what people remember.
This wasn’t an influencer post.
This was a media event.
The Lesson: Marketing Isn’t About Posting
The biggest misconception in modern marketing is that brands win by creating content.
Brands don’t win because they post.
Brands win because people talk.
If your campaign doesn’t create conversation, it dies within 6 hours like every other reel.
But if you can trigger a national conversation, even for 48 hours, you’ve done something most brands never achieve, even with millions in ad spend.
What we did with Dinidu was simple.
We understood human behaviour.
People love to talk. People love to speculate. More than anything, people love to share.
So we didn’t fight that.
We used it.
This Was Just One Campaign
This execution proved something I’ve always believed.
Sri Lankan marketing isn’t lacking budgets.
It’s lacking imagination.
And the easiest way to stand out today isn’t shouting louder.
It’s being smarter.
This was just one collaboration, and if this campaign taught us anything, it’s that the market is hungry for something different.
Something bold. Something strategic. Something that makes noise.
A lot more is coming.
Stay tuned.
