Zomato looked at Saif Ali Khan’s two-year ghee prize and saw a street-level media moment. The result, ‘Better Saif than sorry’, turns a TV quiz-show joke into moving billboards carried by delivery partners.
The hook
The film’s title, Zomato Rider Ki Asli Mehnat Aur Kamai, does the opening work. It sets a rider named Ajay and his real earnings as the promise before the brand punchline arrives. That is the hook: not the celebrity, but the person doing the daily delivery.
The structure of the film
The source doesn’t offer a shot-by-shot breakdown, but the campaign’s structure is clear. It works in two layers: the rider’s real effort gives it authenticity, and the bag copy carries the humour. Lines such as ‘Extra ghee just to be Saif’ and ‘Starring Saunf Ali Khan’ appear as visual gags rather than spoken dialogue, so the message lands quietly while the rider stays the focus.
Why it spread
It spread because Saif Ali Khan’s KBC moment was already a living meme. He won a two-year supply of Gowardhan Ghee and said, ‘That’s it, this is why I came.’ Online jokes followed, and later he joked on The Great Indian Kapil Show that the ghee had not arrived. Users were already asking for the prize to be delivered.
Saif kept the loop alive. Fans opened an Instagram account to push for delivery, and he later posted an ad for the ghee brand with hundreds of bottles stacked at home. By the time Zomato’s bags appeared, the audience was primed to recognise the references.
Zomato joined at the right time and used a format nobody else had: its delivery bags. Instead of a standard social post, the brand put the puns on bags carried by delivery partners, making the joke physical and mobile. The share trigger was recognition. People saw familiar wordplay in an unexpected place and shared it.
- ‘Extra ghee just to be Saif’
- ‘Drive on the Saif side’
- ‘Starring Saunf Ali Khan’
- ‘From the house of Pakodi’
Social users responded with wordplay of their own, including ‘Saif to say, we made it happen’ and ‘That’s a Saif way of marketing.’
The numbers
The source gives no verified reach, sales or engagement figures. The only concrete quantities are the two-year supply of ghee and the hundreds of bottles Saif later showed at home. Treat this as a creative victory without a public metric, not a performance benchmark.
Steal this
- Use owned surfaces as media. Delivery bags, boxes or receipts are free ad space you already pay for.
- Move before the meme fades. Zomato acted while KBC and Kapil Show conversations were active, not weeks later.
- Keep the copy visual and short. Four punchy wordplays did the work; no long film, no forcing the celebrity into the creative.
Watch the original: Zomato on YouTube
Source: News18
