A windfall for Zapak gamers

To lure more gamers and increase stickiness among the existing ones, gaming portal Zapak.com has launched a campaign to talk about its new contest. A Zapak gamer can win cash of up to Rs 2 lakh daily by playing more and more games. The fortnight long ATM Cash Contest, which began January 8, gives out cash rewards to gamers who play the maximum games from noon till midnight. The contestant has to check his ATM statement on Zapak.com daily to check what rewards he has received. The gamers can win confirmed cash and other rewards on playing 25, 35, 45, 65 and 75 games in a day.

Zapak has spent Rs 2 crore, or about “half-a-million dollars”, on the two week campaign, says Arun Mehra, chief marketing officer, Zapak.com. Both the campaign and the contest will continue till the end of January.

“We want gamers to know that loyalty towards Zapak can help them win cash. We want to convey to them that winning is not a matter of chance, but a matter of playing more and more,” he adds.

Zapak.com has been doing campaigns to establish its new product offerings since it was launched at the end of 2006 by Reliance ADAG. Last month, Zapak.com spent Rs 2 crore on a cross-media campaign called Panga Ho Jaye to roll out its Live Multiplayer Games offering.

Is launching a new campaign every two months part of a larger strategy? Says Mehra, “We have done a lot of product launches in the past year for Zapak. This time, we wanted to break the clutter and so we did a contest based campaign.”

The campaign includes a television commercial, a radio spot, on-ground activation and online display advertisements. The TVC was conceptualised by Zapak.com’s official creative agency, Marching Ants, and it was produced by Petal Films.

The 20 second TVC opens on a shot of a lazy cashier at a bank yawning just as a cool looking guy comes in to deposit cash in his account. While the cashier is counting the cash desultorily, the young man bangs another huge bundle of cash in front of him, leaving the lazy cashier annoyed at the extra work. The next shot has the guy putting down yet another thick bundle of notes. The cashier is amazed. The guy leaves, saying, ‘Kal phir aaoonga’. The voiceover breaks in here, announcing Zapak’s ATM Cash Contest: “Playing can win you up to Rs 2 lakh every day. The more you play, the more you win.” (Submit your opinion on this ad.)

The TVC is being streamed on almost all general entertainment channels, movie channels and channels such as Zee Cafe, Zoom, MTV and Channel V.

Neeraja Kale, business head, Marching Ants, says, “Zapak wanted to incentivise the regular gamers at Zapak. The TVC is a direct translation of the idea that the more you play on Zapak, the more cash you can have. The secondary objective behind the campaign was to lure more gamers to Zapak.”

Marching Ants has also worked on the on-ground activation of the ATM Cash Contest to reach out to the youth. “We have put up some posters, standees in multiplexes like Fun Cinemas and shopping malls across Delhi and Mumbai,” says Kale.

“The response has been very good so far. Within a week we’ve got gamers who play more than a hundred games in a day,” claims Mehra.

Apart from the TVC, a radio spot is also on air on Big FM and Fever. As part of the online campaign, four display advertisements (banners) and e-mailers have been created in-house by Zapak. The banner ads for the campaign are running across websites like Cricinfo.com, through ad networks and search engine marketing. (See the Campaigns section for the banner ads.)