Zomato's star-studded 'Har Customer Hai Star' ads backfired as tone-deaf after its IPO

In late August 2021, weeks after its July 14 stock-market debut, Zomato launched the 'Har Customer Hai Star' campaign starring Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif, in which delivery partners turn down celebrity selfies and cake so they can reach their next customer on time.

Social media called the ads tone-deaf: users pointed to delivery partners' protests over long hours and inconsistent pay and asked why Zomato paid stars instead of its riders. Zomato replied that the ads were 'well-intentioned' and 'misinterpreted', that they had been conceived six months earlier, and that its delivery-partner Net Promoter Score had risen from -10% to 28%.

Ad industry observers told Adgully that the brand had missed social listening; one agency chief said that when chatter around a brand is unfavourable, shelving planned ads beats spending more on TV spots that fuel the negative conversation.

Nationwide mockery weeks after its IPO, renewed scrutiny of delivery-partner pay, and a 'well-intentioned' statement critics read as a non-apology.

The campaign glamorised a job whose pay and conditions were being publicly contested.

Celebrity fees became the visible budget that riders did not get, so the thanks read as an insult.

The defence argued intent instead of addressing pay, which extended the backlash.

It landed right after an IPO, when every move was being read as a public-market performance.

When workers' pay is the public issue, celebrity fees become the story: spend big on stars and the ad is priced as a budget choice, not praised as gratitude.

Zomato stood by its statement and the campaign ran its course. The episode became a standard case study in tone-deaf advertising, and ET BrandEquity later listed it in its 2021 roundup of brands that fought Twitter rage — the same year Zomato went public at a valuation that made every marketing misstep a shareholder story.