Nagarjuna Cement Ad

About

Nagarjuna Cement Ad refers to a fake ad in which a jingle from an advertisement by Indian company Nagarjuna Cement is stitched with an animation of an aircraft bouncing off the World Trade Center tower, making a 9/11 joke. The fake advertisement saw viral spread online in March 2024, inspiring various memes, typically featuring footage of cement structures or buildings surviving impacts.

Origin

On May 13th, 2021, Indian cement company Nagarjuna Cement posted a 45-second advertisement to YouTube,^[1] where it garnered over 165,000 views in three years. In the last 13 seconds, the company logo appears on screen followed by a shot of a man turning around and lip-syncing "Nagarjuna Cement" to the jingle.

On February 20th, 2024, animator Wraysque posted a 3D animation of an aircraft bouncing off a World Trade Center tower with the bonk sound effect to YouTube^[2] (shown below) and Instagram^[3] (later removed).

Prior to March 9th, 2024, X^[4] / Twitter and Instagram^[5] user @ahaa_aditya posted a video in which the clip was stitched with the last part of the advertisement, giving the impression that the company made the 9/11 joke in their ad. The original, also shared by the Instagram^[6] meme account @lazy_memerzz has since been removed (reupload shown below).

Spread

On March 9th, 2024, Redditor _UNHUMAN made the earliest found reupload of the video in the /r/therewasanattempt^[7] subreddit, where it received over 3,400 upvotes in two months. On March 11th, YouTube^[8] user NaSh reposted the video, with the upload garnering over 1.2 million views in two months.

The video continued viral spread online through reposts: notably, on March 12th, X^[9] user @PresidentToguro posted the video, with the post gaining over 2,700 reposts and 18,000 likes in two months. On March 15th, the Instagram^[10] account ocdtimesnew reposted the original edit paired with the caption "What a thought, what a vision." The post (shown below) received over 1,100 likes in two months.

On March 19th, 2024, Nagarjuna Cement reacted to the meme on their official X^[11] account, clarifying that the viral video was stitched.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References