Wow! Zomato’s Diwali Ad Has Saif Ali Khan. But Where’s the Wow?

The glasses have come home.

Saif Ali Khan recognises them immediately. He had gifted them to the very person now presenting them to him. Somewhere between two Diwalis, an unwanted present has travelled through the Indian gifting economy and returned to its original owner.

The giver appears to have forgotten. Saif remembers enough for both of them.

A double thumbs-up helps the transaction conclude without casualties. It is a familiar festive manoeuvre: express gratitude, protect the relationship and privately consider whom to give the wretched thing to next.

The scene is funny because the glasses carry a history. There is a relationship, an embarrassing mistake and a recipient obliged to applaud his own recycled generosity.

It is also where Zomato’s Have a WOW Diwali film supplies an unfortunate metaphor for itself.

An advertisement mocking unimaginative presents has arrived with a celebrity’s familiar catchphrase, some amusing reactions and a product rescue visible from the first disappointing gift.

Saif has received the glasses before. The audience may recognise the advertising formula.

Welcome to Ritual of Fake Gratitude

Diwali gifting requires acting ability. Delight must arrive before inspection. Gratitude cannot wait for the price tag. A visibly disappointed recipient risks becoming the evening’s problem, however questionable the present.

Saif handles the assignment beautifully.

A shaving kit invites a joke about his salon expenses. Soap raises an uncomfortable question about personal hygiene. A protein supplement flavoured with soan papdi suggests somebody has found a way to make festive indulgence sound like homework.

The returning glasses provide the best reversal. These presents are ridiculous, but the social discomfort surrounding them is recognisable.

Zomato understands that discomfort. It gives Saif enough material to make the procession entertaining. Then the delivery partner arrives with the food hamper, and the film begins collecting the enthusiasm it has spent its running time withholding. Guitar fantasy and fireworks accompany the transformation.

The campaign promotes curated food hampers from restaurant partners, using Saif’s “wow” association to distinguish disappointing gifts from the food-led alternative. The film was conceptualised in-house.

The proposition is clear. The creative leap is harder to locate.

A predictable product reveal can work perfectly well. Viewers do not need to be shocked by the appearance of a delivery partner in a Zomato advertisement. But anticipation creates its own obligation: the arrival must justify the wait.

Here, the film offers a spectacular reaction in place of a particularly revealing product moment. We know how much Saif likes the hamper. We learn considerably less about why it deserves such extravagant affection.

Zomato has supplied the applause along with the present.

Saif Has Had Better Scripts

The casting is sensible. Saif brings charm, comic timing and an expression that audiences already associate with him. The campaign can begin with a joke viewers understand before the brand has done much work.

That convenience is also its creative trap.

A familiar mannerism gives an advertiser a head start. It does not complete the race. Once recognition has happened, the script still needs to develop the association into something worth remembering.

Ashita Aggarwal, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, puts the challenge this way: If the story merely confirms what the audience expects, recognition may come easily, but surprise becomes harder to achieve.

Zomato gets recognition almost on delivery. The film’s harder task is giving that recognition somewhere interesting to go.

Saif has previously shown what a sharper script can do with a repeated word.

In Asian Paints Royale’s 2015 No to Nice campaign, created by Contract Advertising, he responds to potential purchases and arrangements with an unenthusiastic “nice”. Later, at his party, a guest delivers the same verdict on his house. His own vocabulary returns to disappoint him.

The comparison is uncomfortable for Zomato. Royale gives Saif’s behaviour a consequence. Viewers discover why the repeated response is inadequate when he has to receive it himself.

Zomato’s script gives him a succession of opportunities to deploy a familiar expression. His pleasure eventually confirms the advertiser’s claim, exactly as expected.

The recycled glasses briefly expose him to embarrassment. The hamper restores the comfortable arrangement in which the celebrity loves the product and the product deserves our money.

Aggarwal identifies the danger. If the audience remembers the celebrity’s mannerism but cannot identify what made the brand’s proposition special, the celebrity may have done a better job for himself than for the advertiser.

"Saif is excellent at being Saif here. Zomato could have given him a more demanding job," she adds.

A Towel Is an Obliging Opponent

The bigger weakness appears when the film’s comic contest meets its commercial assignment.

Zomato wants consumers to consider its platform for festive gifting. That is a reasonable ambition. Food offers variety, familiarity and plenty of possibilities for matching a present to a recipient. Ordering through an app can also make an inconvenient errand easier.

But the advertisement chooses opponents that are unusually accommodating.

Soap, shaving products and recycled glasses line up to lose. The food hamper barely has to enter the room before it looks like an improvement.

The tougher rival is the sweet shop a family already trusts.

That shop may know the customer’s preferences. Its box may carry years of festive association. A particular bakery, mithai maker or restaurant may already be someone’s reliable answer to the annual gifting question.

Zomato, therefore, has a more interesting argument available than establishing that Saif would prefer food to another unwanted object.

What makes the platform worth choosing for this occasion? A discovery the buyer would struggle to make elsewhere? A combination that suits a particular recipient? A useful way to send a favourite food across the city? A convincing rescue when somebody has forgotten a gift?

The film does not have to become a catalogue. One specific demonstration could give the hamper a personality.

Instead, considerable creative energy goes into explaining why the alternatives are dreadful. A towel is an obliging opponent. A trusted mithai shop would put up a better fight.

There is another hole in the sales argument. Choosing food does not automatically make a gift thoughtful.

Someone who knows nothing about the recipient can order a thoroughly unsuitable hamper. A modest box from a familiar neighbourhood shop can reflect considerably more attention.

The film understands this when it mocks the rejected presents. Their failure comes from the giver’s poor judgement. Its resolution becomes much more generous to the giver: apparently, the right ordering destination can take care of that.

A platform can simplify a purchase. The advertisement still needs to show how its offer improves the gift.

Other Brands Found Something to Do With Diwali

Festive familiarity does not prevent an unusual idea.

Supertails’ No Bang Diwali film places a human family beneath a dining table. They eat mithai, dress up and continue celebrating in the cramped space, mirroring the refuge pets seek from firecracker noise.

The absurdity does useful work. It makes the viewer spend time in a position normally occupied by the frightened animal. The visual joke carries the reason for the campaign.

That gives us a useful standard for judging Zomato. What does its comedy make us understand about the product?

The unwanted gifts demonstrate indifference, awkwardness and the circulation of objects nobody particularly wants. They supply the film’s richest human observations.

The hamper receives a much simpler treatment. Saif approves.

These campaigns have different commercial objectives, and creative judgement cannot establish which produces more sales. But Zomato has invited a demanding response by making “wow” the organising promise of its film.

The word advertises a level of delight that the script then has to earn.

There is plenty to smile at. The leap from amusement to astonishment remains largely Saif’s responsibility. Fireworks help him carry it.

The Losers Get All the Personality

Consider how much we know about those glasses.

They belonged to Saif. He gave them away. The recipient has brought them back. Their journey reveals something about both men and the polite dishonesty holding the exchange together.

The other rejected gifts also arrive with individual comic identities. The shaving kit has its salon joke. The soap creates embarrassment. The soan-papdi protein supplement combines two recognisable worlds in an absurd object.

Now consider the winning present.

Its principal distinction is the intensity of Saif’s response.

The script lavishes attention on the failures and relies on endorsement to establish the success. The rejected gifts become characters. The hamper gets an entrance.

Zomato has made the losing gifts more interesting than the winning one.

That is the campaign’s most peculiar achievement. Its own comedy sets a standard for specificity that the product reveal struggles to meet.

The film could have made the hamper part of the joke. Its contents might have exposed something about Saif, resolved an earlier embarrassment or demonstrated that somebody had finally paid attention to what he wanted.

Instead, his enthusiasm closes the argument. The advertisement has decided the present is wonderful and hired an accomplished actor to communicate the decision.

A few entertaining scenes make the package pleasant to watch. They cannot supply every missing reason to want what is inside.

Please Check the Original Invoice

The fair defence is straightforward. Saif is charming, the gifting discomfort is familiar and the commercial message gets through. Zomato has produced an accessible festive film that tells viewers what they can order.

It may do that job adequately. But “adequate” is an awkward verdict for an advertisement built around “wow”.

The returning glasses suggest how much more was available. Their history creates the humour. The embarrassment gives Saif something to play. The reversal rewards the viewer’s attention.

The hamper arrives after all that with the advantage of being the advertiser’s product. It is guaranteed a warm reception before anyone opens it.

For a campaign mocking lazy gifting, that is remarkably indulgent treatment.

Zomato has spotted the problem with presenting something familiar in fresh wrapping. It has even made a good joke about it. Then it builds its grand festive promise around a celebrity association the audience already knows and a conclusion the audience can comfortably predict.

Saif delivers his “wow”. The creative team appears to have treated that as the hardest part of the assignment.

Next Diwali, somebody should give the hamper a script. And whoever brings Saif those glasses again should check the original invoice.