India is a nation obsessed with mangoes, and a company is using its love for the fruit to market its services in a very interesting way.
Swiggy is running an ‘Aambulance’ on Mumbai’s roads. The ‘Aambulance’ is a van with transparent sides with a real human patient lying on a hospital bed inside it. But instead of having medical paraphernalia, emergency care devices and doctors around him, there are baskets upon baskets of mangoes. “Down with mango fever? Get your daily dose of ripe mangos. Insta Delivered”, says the back of the van.
Needless to say, the van has been garnering plenty of attention from passersby, though not all reactions have been positive.
It does seem like a pretty clever bit of marketing though. Indians, and especially Mumbaikars, are extremely fond of their mangoes, and the idea of mangoes fixing a mango fever will likely resonate with the general public. Also, with the van running around on Mumbai roads, it’s bound to turn heads, and make people wonder what the entire gimmick is about.
And Swiggy Instamart likely needs ideas like this to stand out in India’s hyper-competitive grocery delivery space. There is now little to differentiate between the top players including Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart in terms of delivery service, prices or quality, so companies would need to rely on marketing to get more mindshare. This dynamic has resulted in some legendary brand ads in the past, with Pepsi and Coke had slugged it out to one-up one other with their ads, and Nike and Adidas having gone through a similar dynamic. And Swiggy Instamart’s Aambulance shows that India’s hyperlocal delivery firms could soon be set for a similar blitzkrieg as they try to grab a slice of India’s hyperlocal delivery market.