Online restaurant search and discovery service Zomato has released a mass media campaign to strengthen its position as a food ordering service. Apart from deploying ad films on TV, Zomato will be active on YouTube and other social media platforms as well. The company is also in the process of evaluating other mainstream media.

Zomato has come up with two 45 second films, which have been conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather, showcase the loving bond between a parent and grown-up child. This campaign marks the first time that Zomato has roped in an external agency partner. The ad films have been directed by Shoojit Sircar (of Piku, Yahaan, and Vicky Donor fame).

The first ad film features a daughter visiting her father, who has separated from her mother. The father attempts to cook her favourite pasta for her, but it gets burnt. The daughter correctly judging her father’s capabilities, or lack thereof, comforts him by saying that she has already ordered, showing him the Zomato app on her phone. And so commences the light-hearted banter between father and daughter over hot pasta. The film ends with the father asking his daughter not to let her mother know about the burnt pasta.

The second film, which is due to go live shortly, features a young man who orders food via Zomato, not wanting his mother to spend all her time in the kitchen.

Speaking about how the ad films were conceptualise, Pramod Rao, SVP – Growth, Zomato, said, “If there is one thing that brings together the same way as sports does, it's food. When we decided to go with our TV commercial for our online ordering product, we wanted it to be as real as possible - something that revolved around what brings us together at our homes. We also came across this Tweet by one of our users which captured the essence of our concept. We approached Ogilvy & Mather to develop the concept further and seeing the concept come into shape over the last couple of months has been an amazing journey.”  

When asked about the objective of this campaign, Rao said, “We've built a healthy online ordering business since the time we launched in India few months ago with literally no marketing spend. We're able to see such strong growth because our users are not using us for the discounts. They are using us for the convenience, and the product they already love Zomato for. So far the response from both the user and restaurant community has been fantastic. Now that a strong foundation has been laid, we're looking to reach out to more consumers and get them to try the product.”

Their users mainly comprise of people with smartphones with high disposable incomes who eat out or order in frequently. And with this campaign Zomato is confident that its reach will be large-scale.

Rao added, “We rely on the advertising medium selectively and for focused campaigns that need to achieve specific goals and this time was no different. In London, for instance, because of a highly competitive landscape, we launched a city-wide advertising campaign on the London Underground in 2013 to break through the clutter and create awareness about Zomato.”

While commenting about what sets them apart from their competitors, Rao said that what differentiates Zomato from the others out there is its product and user experience - the ease of ordering, the ability to use filters to quickly find what one is looking for and the exhaustive database of restaurant options. They have already reached a very healthy volume of orders organically in a span of few months. The campaign's objective is to now reach out to more consumers and get them to try the product.