The recent advertisement of the food delivery aap, Zomato, featuring Bollywood stars like Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif backfired with Twitteratis’ criticism.
Recently, in an advertisement featuring Hrithik Roshan, a Zomato delivery boy is stunned to see the Bollywood star. The Bollywood star asks the delivery man for a selfie which he gets excited about. However, he had to leave as he is determined to do his duty and deliver the food to another location. A similar advertisement was released days back featuring Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif. In this ad, the delivery partner had to leave without having a piece of birthday cake offered by the actress due to the notification of another delivery.
The idea behind the advertisement is to make the delivery man the hero and commitment of the company towards its customers. The advertisement had this dialogue, “Hrithik Roshan ho ya aap, apne liye har customer hai star (Be it Hrithik Roshan or you, every customer is a star for Zomato).”
However, the idea of the food delivery app was perceived differently by netizens, drawing a lot of criticism and negative comments.
Social media users slammed Zomato for being tone deaf and putting such pressure on their workers that they don’t have a minute for themselves in between two deliveries. Some users also asked Zomato to pay their workers instead of giving fat money to these Bollywood celebrities on such ads.
The act of Zomato to gain popularity and appreciation from its users, reversed and brought criticism with #Zomatoad #Zomato.
Responding to these criticisms, on the evening of the 30th of August, Zomato took to its official Twitter handle and posted an explanation.
The tweet read, “The other side of the story.”
The official statement read, “We believe that our ads are well-intentioned, but were unfortunately misinterpreted by some people.” It further read, “We understand that you expect more and better from us. Our delivery partner Net Promoter Score has increased from -10% to 28% (and continues to rise). We will also, very soon, publish a blog post explaining why we think our delivery partners are fairly compensated for the work/time that they put in.”
Launched in 2008, Zomato is one of the biggest food delivery company in India.
