 "Zomato")
Zomato made headlines when it announced it was advertising on porn websites on Tuesday. Yes, it was a watershed moment in terms of Indian brands being bold enough to make the move, but that wasn’t the most interesting takeaway.
Two days down the line, it’s hardly surprising that the company has decided to pull the campaign. Veiled in talk of having “crossed the fine line between marketing irreverence and cultural insensitivity” is the fact that Zomato ran the campaign solely to grab eyeballs.
The restaurant discovery and food ordering service has been in crisis mode for the past few months. It underwent a restructuring that saw close to 300 people being fired, followed by co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal pointing out that the company will miss its revenue targets this year.
Selling food through sex is one of the oldest tricks in the book. America has been selling burgers to people using some very provocative imagery for a long time now. Carls Jr and Burger King commercials have NSFW (not safe for work) written all over them.
Therefore revolutionary and amazing aren’t terms I’d attach to Zomato’s initial move. Desperate certainly would be. What Zomato tried to pull off was undoubtedly creative. Tapping an untapped marketing channel, the fun use of innuendo and no real provocative imagery, that’s all really great.
However, to understand where I’m going with this, we’ve really got to look at demographics.
It’s not rocket science to assume that Zomato’s largest user base is single, working professionals, or college goers that don’t really have the time or are too lazy to cook themselves. That demographic is awfully similar to the largest chunk of porn watchers in the country.
All of us have consumed porn. Be it through the sophisticated and lust filled James Bond movies or the edgy and unrealistic stuff on the Internet. The difference being, we can still pull through the awkward moments of watching a James Bond movie with our families, with porn, not so much.
If Zomato had quietly continued with its practice of advertising on porn websites, it might have actually been able to pull off a growth in sales for late night food deliveries which the company was targeting. By boasting about the move, it ran the risk of alienating itself from a whole lot of family men and women.
It’s all about the eyeballs.
Running ads on porn websites. Great! Telling everyone about it, especially in a conservative society such as ours. Not so great. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in for India being more tolerant and open to different views, but frankly that’s not the case yet. I find it hard to believe that the guys over at Zomato were oblivious to this fact, yet they chose to go ahead with it, and that shows desperation.
The fact of the matter is restaurants aren’t too happy with Zomato right now. Further, the company’s sales team, which is tasked with onboarding more restaurants onto the platform are failing (quite miserably if you really read into Goyal’s letter). The firm’s inability to drive customers to these restaurants is ultimately what’s the problem.
There might not be such a thing as bad publicity, but trying to improve stickiness in the minds of customers using porn of all things, isn’t the brightest of ideas. Zomato has gone from making headlines for being a successful company, to a floundering company, to one that advertises on porn sites. And the adverse reactions it received from its customers and investors makes it clear why they finally decided to plug the campaign. Hopefully, they have managed to cut their losses by not persisting with a bad branding idea.
