Brands spend a huge sum of money on gathering consumer attention across mediums. Paid social media is a hot topic in town. But that doesn’t mean the organic dream is dead.
Yesterday, Zomato did something that helped the brand garner social media attention for free. The secret behind this unintentional organic viral engagement on social media was a tweet reply followed by a heavy flow of tweets, retweets in the form of brand love and praise. This did not just help the brand fetch affinity, but also increased the number of app downloads and orders.
It happened that a man named Amit Shukla with the Twitter handle ‘@NaMo_SARKAAR’ from Madhya Pradesh tweeted Zomato that he would not accept the food delivery because the rider was a non-Hindu.
Shukla’s account has now been deleted. But he wrote, “Just cancelled order on @ZomatoIN they allocated a non-Hindu rider for my food they said they can't change rider and can't refund on cancellation I said you can't force me to take delivery I don't want don't refund just cancel.”
Zomato did not take much time to respond to the bigoted tweet, saying “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion.”
Here’s the tweet:
By tweeting the reply, Zomato took a bold step to stand for a strong purpose-led cause. It was bound to get all the love from the Twitterattis. This is a pure example of good organic user-generated content, where consumers do advocacy for the brand on their own. No influencers, macro or micro, is paid to write good things about the brand.
Zomato’s reply won the internet and garnered 25.5K retweets and more than 78,000 likes with 35.6K people talking about the brand’s initiative.
Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal also wrote a firm message on Twitter, saying, "We are proud of the idea of India — and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren't sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.”
Not just him, India’s prominent personalities were all praises for the brand.
Former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted, "Respect. I love your app. Thank you for giving me a reason to admire the company behind it.”
Former Election Commissioner SY Quraishi tweeted:
The food delivery app also made its point stand stronger by posting a long note on Twitter on ‘Food, Religion, and Halal’.
Zomato is an example of a brand that is ready to take risk to upset its consumers in the short term but take a stand for a cause and hence, in the long run, get the benefit of consumer love and attention.
Unlike regular days, when a brand has to get its public relationship team to persuade publishers, influencers and content creators to talk about it, something like this was like icing on the cake.
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