Note : All the characters in this post are real. Any resemblance with any fictional character is purely coincidential.
Everyone has seen them on TV. Everyone loves to adore them. Some compare them with the Simpsons, some with the minions (Despicable me fame) and some.. well… simply look at them as comic characters created by the Famous Ogilvy & Mather for Vodafone.
Yes, they are the #ZooZoos.
When I was in B-School, professors often discussed about the strategy behind the Zoozoo campaign; how the need to promote the VAS services gave rise to the Zoozoos. Our marketing professor kept repeating in the class about the ‘Jujju’ campaign and how it was one of the most effective campaigns ever launched in the Indian Market. Launching it in IPL was a masterstroke. This campaign was engraved into our heads. Ask anyone which was their favorite ad campaign ( an interview question for placements), and most would say ‘Zoozoo’.
However, towards the end of my days in college, I was one of the lucky ones to have interacted closely with one of the team members who created this campaign for the first time. And the facts are a bit further from the ‘story’ we are taught in the schools.
The story goes something like this:
Somewhere in February, Rajiv Rao from O&M, who was handling the Vodafone Account was bestowed the opportunity to come up with a campaign which would run during IPL, season 2. Vodafone had gone with the Happy to help campaign in Season one, and looking at the popularity, knew season 2 would be bigger. It wanted the campaign to encompass the whole series with 360 degree marketing which would touch the lives of Indians who would be drowned in Cricket fever, and remain in their hearts even after the series is over.
One thing was clear. O&M had to better their pug and the ‘happy to help’ campaign. Expectations were already running high.
Now, airing one ad for the whole season would have made them repetitive. Hence, the idea of airing a series of different commercials for the whole series was born. Now, the only thing in Vodafone’s artillery was VAS (the value added services), which could provide this kind of variety. As soon as this idea came on the table, the meeting room started buzzing with ideas of how they can showcased. They could not stop the creative wheel to stop churning! Hence, the idea of coming up with featuring VAS as the theme of the campaign for the whole IPL series was born.
However, budget was a constraint. It would take a lot of ads to be shot for showcasing all the VAS. It was decided to use common characters for all ads. In the initial meetings, the idea of coming up with cartoon characters were discussed as something would automatically give the audience a humour quotient, and would be clutter breaking as very few animated ads had been tried on the Indian screen. Ogilvy experimented with several characters and finally went with ‘egghead’ characters that don the colour white (with black dots for eyes and a mouth), have heads resembling eggs, and disproportionately thin bodies.
Time was still a constraint. They had less than a month to execute the whole campaign. Bangalore based Nirvana group came to rescue when they came up with the idea of getting costumes made and shooting the commercials. IPL had been shifted to South Africa, and as the activation needed to happen there, the whole crew shifted to South Africa. The ads were shot on south African actors wearing the white ballooned quirky looking costumes.
The series of 25 ads were shot in a record span of 10 days, as well.. the IPL was beginning in a week!
This was the first ZooZoo ad ever on TV :
The ZooZoos were an instant hit! The media came running, asking who are these white creatures, what is their name? Rajiv Rao was sitting in office when someone told him about this. No one had thought of it as it wasn’t a task to popularise the name in the first place! He called a meeting. People thought of different names, and Finally, the name ‘ZooZoo’ was coined. . There’s no science to it, as Rajiv explained – the name just had to be something fun, memorable and catchy, and not a clever one that’s difficult to pronounce. (Source : http://bit.ly/18lLVRN)
And hence, came into existence the celebrities that we know now.
ZooZoos has given Vodafone an asset they can use for a long long time. Set in an alternate universe, these white humanoids mimic every human emotion in their quirky way, and inform us how Vodafone makes our lives better.
O&M has experimented with the character sketches a lot – A super ZooZoo was created for launching the 3G services in the later seasons. the newest ones have mini ZooZoos which talk about the internet services that Vodafone provides.
And to think of it, one accidental idea gave birth to so many case studies for the B-school generation. And how we lapped it up!
Indian Marketing Campaigns 