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From movies to outdoor advertising, trolls to people, let’s dig into how we captured India’s marketing zeitgeist.
like an old man Convenient Pile rice, meat, and spices and place them over hot coals to create dishes that bring joy to millions. Diving into the marketing efforts that Zomato has amassed over the past 16 years is a daunting task, but ultimately satisfying. At the end of it.
With countless memes on its social media accounts, several ads on TV and online, a slew of witty red billboards, and immortal push notifications, Zomato has been leading the instant marketing game for years, often topping the zeitgeist charts. has dominated.
And brands know it, too. How else do you think you had the self-awareness to create an ad around how people pronounce it? Zomaat or Zomite?
Zomato spent Rs 1,227.4 million on advertising and promotions, up from Rs 1,216.8 million in FY22, according to its FY23 annual report.
“I call it ZoMaato,” reveals Sahibjeet Singh Sawhney, head of marketing at Zomato.
Sawhney, who is three months into his six-and-a-half year with the brand and has been the head of marketing since November 2022, has helped Zomato usher in a trend in marketing of the moment, at least from a social media perspective. I admit that. View.
However, he is mindful that every brand is in that situation right now and wonders if Zomato is doing better than others. “You can say that,” he said, pointing to the writer.
Whatever the answer, Sawhney attributes all of Zomato’s marketing success to the people it employs, the system design it has in place, and the freedom it offers creators.
In the last few years, incorporating brands into movies has become a new trend. Zomato has been front and center in ‘active integration’. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Jawanand appeared in vikram, Doctor Gand thank god.
Sawhney doesn’t think this is a new trend.he mentioned Domino’s Pizza phil hella ferri Coca-Cola and Starbucks have appeared many times in the movie. However, he agrees that as an internet company, Zomato “may have been a little early to start integrating movies.”
“Everyone watches movies, but we wanted to build an association: movies → Zomato → food. From that perspective, we thought about it early and executed some interesting projects.”
He says the process takes time and results are not seen after nine to 12 months.
Zomato currently has incoming requests. Brands are looking for active integration, not passive integration. “…just put my logo on it.” Dhaba Passive integration.But please take a look jawan, it is active. ”
“Spider-Man was almost a year in the making, and with the Coca-Cola sign in the early versions of the movie and Spidey coming to India in the multiverse, we felt it was the right time. ”
The people who created Zomato
In the movie, when Odin says to his son Thor, thor ragnarok“Asgard is not a place, it is a people,” the Elder of the Norse gods wisely pointed out to the power of people over place.
Zomato is no exception. When a marketing executive talks about creators, he’s referring to his team. “When I say creators, I mean the people who create content for Zomato. I encourage creators to create something unique.”
And they do. In this publication, we profiled his 2021 influencer of the year, Sahiba His Bali, who was a senior marketing associate and content creator at Zomato. She currently works at edtech brand Unacademy.
“70% of our team are creatives: designers, editors, filmmakers, copy editors, etc.,” says the head of marketing. He argues that a system design in which “all creators work in her one team and choose projects they feel connected to” will energize the brand’s marketing.
Unlike the usual recruitment process where potential candidates take tests and submit projects, Zomato requires candidates to spend more time with the team than copy testing, especially for copywriting jobs. It will be.
“We meet that person, we bring them to our team, we jam together for a week or 10 days…that person is going to spend most of their time with the team, so the wavelength is There has to be a match,” Sawhney explains.
This hiring process is necessary because he believes you can’t judge a person’s skills in an hour or in a mock test. “It’s about how ideas come out every day, how he can take a 20% idea and turn it into 100%. What we’re looking for is how he can work with his team to build ideas. That’s what I’m doing.”
Zomato, an internet-first company, is no stranger to criticism, trolling and calls for boycotts. That advertising or social media content is often the trigger. Kakura Advertisements call for casteism; Hirtik Roshan Advertisements or symbols that may hurt religious sentiments M.C. B.C. A sign that would offend the Puritans.
No one likes trolls, but as internet usage has exploded in India over the past few years, their influence and potential damage has increased.
“We are a national brand and we never intend to hurt anyone,” Sawhney said, adding that whenever the brand feels something is going wrong and things are not going as planned, “we speak up about it. Please take this seriously and withdraw it immediately. And if necessary, please write an apology.”
He also revealed that the level of diversity on the team has increased, as well as the checks and balances before anything gets published.
In 2019, Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal confronted a user asking for a non-Hindu delivery executive. Unfortunately, such moments are becoming fewer and fewer as the days go by.
Zomato is part of a slowly growing space of brands that are ordering in-house creative teams to create ads and content, rather than relying on creative advertising agencies. Other notable companies include Disney+ Hotstar and Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL).
“We’ve been on hiatus from working with agencies for quite some time. We’re writing our own scripts, we’re writing our own creative,” he said, adding that lack of talent at agencies is not to blame. I made it clear right away.
For Sawhney, it has more to do with the “loss of translation” when dealing with an agency and the fact that there is an informed intuition and understanding of the brand and its customers, which an in-house marketing team expensive.
Gamifying the media spending game
Zomato’s content is frequently distributed, especially on billboards. Regarding the company’s media strategy, the head of marketing said, “We are conscious of our spending.”
Zomato has partnered with TV and outdoor media buying agency GroupM.
However, Sawhney points out that: kheer mangoji. ”
“When it comes to our billboards, we have a clear view that they should be moved.”
When asked how he balances conscious spending with the urge to go viral, he says that brands only put distribution power behind their copy and communications if they are confident that the advertising will work. says.
The brand hopes to spread copy on billboards, but appears to be retreating from TV advertising. That’s because it’s currently focused solely on connected TV (CTV).
“We do CTV through YouTube and Disney+ Hotstar…With the new use of advertising and branded campaigns, a significant percentage of our reach is on CTV,” Sawhney said.
The company chose this medium because when people watch content on linear TV, they always have their smartphones in hand, and brand advertising may not reach them.
To reach people on their smartphones, “YouTube and Instagram are two platforms to advertise and create content.”
What portends for the near future?
When asked about AI, Sawhney said, “Humans and AI will beat everything. It can’t be AI or humans.” The company’s product and technology teams use AI, but its marketing team does not. It is their creativity that generates all viral content.
But experiments are being done here and there. For example, Zomato used its AI to recreate the masks of footballer Lionel his Messi, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and entrepreneur Elon who sells tea and food products in India.
The rise of AI is not his main challenge this year. It is about taking the Zomato brand deeper into India and creating categories and use cases.
Will brand marketing or performance drive this foray? “We’re very clear that it’s a 50-50 game, or a 60-40 game, depending on what you want,” he replies. But when it comes to creating categories and understanding regional nuances, “there will be a tilt in brand marketing.”
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