Well, this was always my dream to write a post on my online marketing blog about something that the reader “wont believe” what happens next or “will be amazed at what you see” or “number 19th will shock you“. Now that’s out of the way let’s focus on some quality content and not catchy headlines.

Talking about quality content, no one in the Indian internet industry has managed to create top class, high quality, user generated content like Zomato. The brand is on it’s way to become a cult. It’s considered cool to be an active Zomato user and post reviews. On top of that, the brand is really investing a lot to retain and keep food connoisseurs to keep commenting, reviewing and rating restaurants online.

Talking about retaining, Zomato a very fast paced, every evolving online company would desperately need exceptional tech talent to support and innovate with it’s product. For the very same reason,

Zomato being social and user focussed to the core and India being an engineer’s nation tried something really innovative.

Zomato started a debate. A debate that sparks instant connection, over here it started a war. The debate this time was

Bangalore vs Delhi – Which one really should be called the tech capital of India?

Zomato, to hire good tech talent, came up with an interesting landing page on it’s website.

The landing page looked like below.

Every element of a good marketing landing page

If you analyze the landing page, they did make a landing page that “C.O.N.V.E.R.T.S.” Straight out of kissmetrics post on landing pages.

C – Clear Call to Action

O – Offer

N – Narrow Focus

V – Very Important Attributes

E – Effective Headline

R – Resolution Savvy Layout

T – Tidy Visuals

S – Social Proof

What Zomato didn’t fathom that a simple post would be taken up by the audience on twitter with furore.

Having said that, in my opinion the reactions were too strong. People over reacted out of nothing better to do or out of vengeance or simply deep down inside they knew what Zomato was saying was correct, not completely though. The reactions were funny and in some cases extremely harsh.

How it all started!

And the reactions start. Uninstall seriously?

Nothing shortsighted about it! It’s a joke, not a ploy to change the world

Strong words bro. Strong words.

There are innumerable such tweets that went on ranting about how they no longer want to be associated with the brand. The negative tweets were more visible primarily because Bangalore is more active on twitter than Delhi.  The debate got so heated up that Zomato had to do major level damage control.

Damage Control # 1

They posted an “Update” while still keeping the page and it’s content on the website.

Damage Control #1 Did it help?

Damage Control #2

Well, the above I guess did not really help. So they had to blur the entire page with just a section called “Update & Apology”. I dont have the screen shot of the same as they took it down in a few hours.

Damage Control #3

All the users landing on the hiring page created were now being redirected to a lengthy blog article which is sort of a public apology, written by Deepinder Goyal himself, CEO of Zomato. The title of the article being “We’re crazy. Not stupid.”

Zomato probably didnt realize that they are no more next door start up who can get away with anything.

The users love Zomato. Each and every post on their facebook page is loved, liked and shared. They are now a brand that can influence the target audience emotionally. I didnt see anything wrong with this particular campaign, a light hearted dig at a city to hire good talent in their company. It was not regional, it wasnt meant to hurt anyone, it was all in good humor.

I dont even what the big deal is about. We have Mumbai as the financial capital, Delhi as, well, THE capital. What’s the huge cry about starting a small debate on which should be the Tech Capital of India even if the facts were biased, misleading and convenient to work in their favor. Isn’t that the case with 90% of the toothpastes who claim to be no.1 brand recommended by dentists?

All in all, Zomato office would have been quite abuzz in the last 2 days. They also say no publicity is bad publicity. We need Zomato to find restaurants, read reviews and all this will be long forgotten. People who have so righteously uninstalled the app will again end up installing sooner or later.

In the meanwhile, someone demanded that India should be the Idiot Capital of the world.

Let’s check out here what he/she has to say?