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Arun Mehra is the Chief Marketing Officer of Zapak.com. Intelligent and savvy marketing and advertising strategies have been key

to the success of this highly acclaimed gaming portal.

Sonu Sangameswaran speaks to the forthcoming and charismatic CMO to learn more about how Zapak handled its advertising and

what users can look forward to in the future.

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We used a complete 360 degree model from television to everything else. Our advertising strategies included the outdoors, the

internet and even unconventional places like the loos, escalators, radio, viral; pretty much a thick mix of everything that would

work. We targeted all the major cities in the country.

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Zapak is a coined word and we believe that coined words work better, specially in the Internet space. Hence we came out with

Zapak. When we got the logo, we found it to be very classy, majestic, and young to look at; it's particularly connected to

technology; those were the insights we got not only within ourselves but also by doing the right research. Youth was one of the

biggest targets and we found that the logo found resonance with them, so we just went with it.

       

       
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You know, what we managed to do very well with Zapak was to keep the pace up. The business of Internet was unlike the others;

the spectrum was different and we thought it should be a good mix of online and offline that needs to come about. We also needed

to establish the brand because the brand would then pull the people and users to the product itself.

We had created enough excitement around the brand that it would naturally make people want to work with us, partner and

alliance with us; consumers basically wanting to consume us.

With the aura around the brand, we managed to create that pull in the first 3 months itself which is unheard of in the Internet

space and now we have 4 and a half million users!

So because the start was well orchestrated, the brand was in the mind of consumers; it was very well for the business. At the time

in the Internet business, there weren't too many players doing anything; you had the Naukris and the Yatras of the world

advertising but in terms of new brand launches, there was nothing as memorable as Zapak. So the category itself was a new one

for the Indian consumer. So everything seemed to work well for us and came together!

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Sooner or later everyone is going to be getting into email. One of the fears my father had and I had was the fear of technology

which actually does not exist. So keeping this audience in mind- i.e. the new user; the fundamental and basic requirement for a

new user of an email service is that it should be fast and it should be simple. Those were the two main product propositions or

insights we gave out to our consumer. Our tag was that our email service was very fast and simple for the first time user to use.

We look at the platform as a whole so 4.5 million includes email service, gaming and everything we've offered.

  
  

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Our advertising agency has also been very partnering in our marketing efforts. They've supported us with ideas they've come about

with and adopted ideas we've come about with. So it's been a very fruitful relationship and co- partnership; we're happy with the

support they've given us. Granted there were some teething issues in the beginning but by and far, they've supported our ideas. So

it's not like they've come out with ideas all the time. At times, we've created and supervised what we wanted. Marching Ants is the

agency for Zapak.com and for Zapak Collectibles and Gameplexes we have Think Why Not; so these 2 agencies handle the

advertising basically.

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There's a whole host of things that we've lined up; if you look at the marketing side, we've successfully run contests, promotions

and alliances. So we've recently announced our tie-up with Bhoothnath where we're taking the Bhoothnath collectibles and gaming

to the consumer. We had in the last quarter successfully concluded the Zapak ATM promotion where cash prizes were offered to

our users. So there's a whole gamut of things we've done and will do to get closer to our customer.
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Young people and gamers all across the world are the same; they all need entertainment. Everybody is a gamer; so the

fundamentals and essence of the brand will be the same as we go across the market. Itƞs like how MTV keeps the essence the same

in various markets; that's how the whole Zapak Global brand is going to pan out.

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It's young, high tech, aspirational, yet it has a mass appeal to it. It's a little bit cheeky. Zapak caters to young kids 4-12; we have

Zapak kids and Zapak girls and it caters to the Indian youth of today who're both casual and hardcore gamers. So we're actually

dealing with a predominantly Indian audience of gamers but it's basically gamers.

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It's been very fruitful so far. Our games are doing very well on Shah Rukh's website, the Kolkatta Knight Riders' website.

Source: http://www.adclubbombay.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=225:zapak-
the-advertising-story&catid=74:interviews&Itemid=37