Most advertisements prominently feature the brands they’re advertising, but an Indian brand has done things a little differently.
Some newspaper readers in India today woke up to some loud front page ads. “Happy 18th birthday to us”, the ads said in white with a bright red background. “thank you for keeping us in your hearts (and bank statements)” the ad continued. Intriguingly, was signed off by saying “no logo required”, and saying “you know who we are :)”
Many people would’ve guessed the ads belonged to Zomato based mainly on the colour scheme, and they would’ve been right. As Zomato shared on X, it is indeed its 18th birthday. “happy birthday to us,’ Zomato said in an X post.
But the ad has drawn some divergent opinions on X. Some thought that the ad worked, and Zomato was identifiable by the colours and the copy. “The logo may be missing. The brand recall clearly isn’t. If the internet can’t stop discussing it, the campaign has already won,” wrote an X user.
“18 years of food delivery. 18 different fees to deliver it. We know who you are!” wrote another.
But some felt that it wasn’t immediately apparent that Zomato was behind the ad. “Whoever approved this Zomato copy of the TOI front page ad surely is too self-absorbed with the brand and has lost touch with reality. I honestly thought it was a Vodafone ad,” wrote someone on X. “I beg to differ. The color and text here don’t provide enough context,” wrote another user.
This ended up becoming a bit of a trend, with people — largely tongue in cheek — saying the ad belonged to different companies.
A user posted that the ad was from Kotak Mahindra Bank — which also has the same red as its brand colours — and the bank even responded.
Someone else felf that the ad could’ve belonged to any of BookMyShow, Kotak or Vodafone.
Regardless of whether people understood who was behind the ad, it’s certainly got people talking on the internet. But the ad by itself felt a bit mediocre — there was no cleverness or humour that could’ve made it immediately apparent that the ad was from Zomato, and had it not been for the colour and the font, the ad could’ve been mistaken for belonging to many other companies. As such, it seemed like a bit of a wasted opportunity from Zomato, that too on the front page of major newspapers, but the mere chutzpah of running an ad with no logo seems to have earned it some chatter nonetheless.