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There is more to Zapak.com’s campaign than Salman Khan
The Reliance ADAG led gaming portal has launched an innovative campaign, including mass media and other touchpoints, to spread the message that gaming is omnipresent and all of us have played some game or the other during the course of our lives
Zapak.com, the Reliance ADA Group’s gaming portal, has not stopped at roping in Salman Khan to promote the content on its site. The portal, which falls under the purview of Zapak Digital Entertainment, has rolled out a comprehensive marketing campaign to popularise not just the portal, but also the concept of gaming as a whole.
As per research conducted by Zapak Digital Entertainment, it was discovered that most of the portal’s potential TG (SEC A1, A2 and B1, aged between 8-25 years) has played one or the other computer/online game at some point. “We came up with the insight that everyone is a gamer. Crooks play games with cops; even the ‘Mahabharata’ involved a lot of mind-games,” says a philosophical Arun Mehra, chief marketing officer, Zapak Digital Entertainment. According to him, only the medium has evolved – earlier, it was board games, now, we have computer games.
| The escalator innovation. Click here to see bigger image. |
Urinal branding at malls. Click here to see bigger image. |
The car sticker. Click here to see bigger image. |
Zapak’s campaign on television comprises three TVCs, each highlighting the competitive spirit of a gamer. One of them has a person climbing a staircase swiftly, competing with a liftman stationed inside a lift. The second one has two men taking a leak at a roadside urinal, competing on who ends up peeing to the highest point possible on the wall. A third one, on similar lines, will soon be launched.
Outdoor and ambient media, too, are being utilised innovatively. Apart from the regular hoardings, malls across eight cities, including CR2 in Mumbai, Sahara Mall in New Delhi, and others in Pune and Chennai, have been captured with common insights. For instance, kids tend to race with escalators in malls, climbing down or up faster than the speed of the escalator. So, a sticker has been placed at the base point of the escalator, which reads, ‘The race begins’, and another at the end point, which says, ‘Game over’. Similarly, men’s toilets in these malls also carry branding efforts. Various heights in the toilet are marked as ‘Level 1’, ‘Level 2’, and so on, with a message that says, ‘Release your pressure at Zapak.com’. Further, stickers have been stuck at the back of some cars, with messages asking the follower of the car how many cars he has overtaken that day. As can be observed, competition is at the core of Zapak’s communication.
Radio won’t be left out either. Zapak’s signature tune will soon be launched on radio, giving listeners the option of downloading various versions of the tune as a ring tone. “This will get across the flavour of Zapak as a brand,” Mehra says.
Apart from this, viral marketing was released on the Web a few days ago. The core thought is ‘Hands are for Zapak’. Hands are important for an online gamer. Short videos have been released on the Internet, which show how a person can’t use his hands for important work because they are involved in playing a game on Zapak. One of these situations has an interesting dialogue between the characters, Gabbar Singh and the Thakur, from the blockbuster film, ‘Sholay’. As Gabbar Singh thunders his famous line, asking the Thakur to give up his hands, the Thakur replies promptly that he can’t because he uses them for better things on Zapak.com.
Zapak.com has pumped in around US$2-3 million in its promotional activities.
© 2006 agencyfaqs!