Awesome Ads

Get jokes anywhere anytime: 3 tribal zoozoos are shown performing their culinary ceremonies. They are dancing around a boiling cauldron in which they are stewing a town zoozoo (their feast). At the next moment the captive zoozoo gets a sms joke, reading which he starts laughing like anything & leaves the tribal trio confuzzled. The film then shows that Voda also allows for subscribing to its jokes services.

Go green with nature: This one is very simple & a delight to see happening in the zoozoos world. A zoozoo is relaxing on a hammock enjoying his drink & read. Suddenly someone mows one of the trees his hammock was fastened to & the poor zoozoo has a bad fall. Then comes the message of the ad- Save trees. Switch to e-bill.

Zoozoo newspaper: An ad about Voda’s news updates service. Amusingly, a civil zoozoo goes to a park and sits beside an idly sat zoozoo who’s also wearing an eyepatch. He, then, greets him & just picks up the newspaper lying there. But he becomes uneasy after reading & learning that the he’s sitting next to a wanted criminal. Pretending innocence, he sneaks away from there asap.

Learn a new English word everyday: A very good zoozoo ad telling about Voda’s service for increasing one’s vocab. This time zoozoos are entertaining & guiding their alien friend about their place. Soothing his queries they tell him what certain things are called in their native lingo. In this process all the zoozoos get a bit playful & misguide the alien about a carnivore (similar to a tiger of our world). Unaware of the danger, the poor alien unintentionally teases the animal & saves himself from being just bitten.

ZooZoo’s Review: In a celebrity-led ad circus where brands find endorsers only in celebrities with some recent claim to fame, Vodafone has given an answer by creating extraordinarily unique brand endorsers in ‘PUG’ now the ‘ZOOZOOs’. These enduring brand icons not only give strong brand recall but also rule out the possibilities of the brand being overshadowed by the celebrity.

Ogilvy & Mather, Voda’s account holder creative agency, brainstormed this campaign to position Vodafone as an innovation leader in the mobile service category. And to do so, it leveraged IPL in a manner that the brand proved to be the most salient & engaging throughout the event.

O&M has even limited the number of emotions to be used in these ads, to keep things easy. One more thing to be noted is that these ads don’t carry any voice over too. Each film, shot against a Grey backdrop, has these characters interacting with one another (some storylines even have Zoozoo families) with the product story weaved in.

Indeed a smashing creative whose effectiveness can be gauged from the fact that teenagers even began conversing in Zoozoos language (the same effect as the likes of ‘Pingu’ & ‘Teletubbies’ kids shows had). In fact, Vodafone has already come out with merchandising created around these creatures to match the mass hysteria that followed.

The marketing & PR exercise pushed the brand to a cult like following, far surpassing even the pug craze. But one has to be careful about letting the Zoozoos become bigger than the brand or the message. Vodafone shouldn’t get stuck with a format as they did suffer this to a certain extent with the pug.

Some feel that it’s no mean feat to unleash so many commercials at a go, with the risk of consumers not grasping them as fast as the brand churns them out. Plus… VAS services being promoted by the Zoozoos are probably best deciphered by the urban consumer only, a market that is already pretty saturated in terms of mobile penetration.