A Specific Advertising Zoozoo Campaign by Vodafone - Essay Example

? Case Study – Zoozoo campaign by Vodafone (Ogilvy and Mather) By Introduction In the year 2007,popular British telecom company Vodafone acquired a 67% stake in India based company Hutchinson Essar, making a foray into the lucrative Indian market for 11 billion dollars (Silicon India News, 2007). Subsequently, the company launched a campaign to transition the brand identity from the existing ‘Hutch’ to the new ‘Vodafone’. While the campaign was a huge success, with people recognising the new brand identity all over the country, the level of acceptance for the new brand was relatively low. Following this, the company launched its ‘Happy to Help’ campaign, featuring the popular Hutch mascot (a Pug) and offering excellent customer service to its subscribers. This too was an effort in vain as people still connected the pug to the old brand, counteracting the company’s efforts to establish their presence in the country. This left Vodafone in a difficult situation where they needed to bring out their own mascot which would win over the hearts of the people while simultaneously communicating their USPs to their target audience. As explained by Harit Nagpal, the then Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone India in an interview to afaqs (2009), Vodafone was acquiring customers at a very fast pace, but a large number of them were unaware of the value added services offered by their telecom service provider. Some of these services, like phone backup, had been available for over two years without being used much. Thus, the marketing team at the organisation felt a need to showcase their array of products and services, build an emotional bond with their customers and still be positioned as a market leader. It was this need that led to the creation of India’s most loved brand mascot in a decade. Conceptualizing the Campaign When in trouble, you turn to your best friend. If Vodafone India had a best friend, it was their multi award-winning ad agency Ogilvy and Mather, which was tasked with coming up with a new mascot and ad campaign to accomplish these goals. According to an interview with Rajiv Rao, Executive Creative Director, South Asia, Ogilvy India, the only brief given to the agency about the desired mascot was that the character had to be ‘simple to a stupefying level’ (afaqs 2009). After much experimentation, the agency came up with characters with humungous ellipsoid heads (with dots for eyes and the mouth) and disproportionately thin bodies clad in white. These ‘Zoozoos’ were simple living characters who spoke a language of their own (quite akin to the tongue of gibberish) and expressed emotions in a manner similar to the emoticons one came across on chat engines and forums. The idea behind using these characters was to portray slightly comical and endearing scenes featuring these Zoozoos where each scene or advertisement was used to portray one value added service to the customer. Each film was shot against a grey background, showing these characters interacting with each other with the product story weaved in. The Beginning of the Campaign Once they were done creating a mascot for an extremely ambitious purpose and shooting advertisements with extremely high expectations, the agency had the unenviable task of deciding when, where and how to launch this campaign. The company’s investment in the previous year’s ‘Indian Premier League’ cricket tournament had failed to make much of an impact on the target audience despite the series shattering the country’s television rating records for the past half decade. Therefore, it came as a surprise to most that the agency recommended investing an entire quarter’s advertising budget into the 47 day tournament and that the client complied (4Ps Business and Marketing, 2007). While the company took a huge risk choosing to invest in a venture that had already failed them in the recent past, they incorporated one significant change in their advertising strategy. The idea now was to treat advertising as content. The company had chosen to come out with a variety of ads, each with a different and unique storyline and exhibiting a different product offering to the customers to avoid being monotonous (since the viewer is exposed to an advertisement at least every two minutes in the tournament). They launched 29 different advertisements, each being launched on consecutive days of the tournament. This not only entertained the viewers, but made them anticipate each day’s new advertisement, increasing the efficacy of the campaign. This was probably the first time in Indian history that cricket crazy fans had actually looked forward to a commercial break during a match. Television was not the only sphere of focus for the Zoozoo campaign. The company complemented the interest created by the television commercials with on-ground exposure (in the cricket stadia) placing people in Zoozoo costumes in each match location, ground mats on the playing fields, advertising on perimeter boards and sales kiosks for Zoozoo merchandise during matches. This was supported by television interviews about the characters, outdoor and print campaigns explaining cricket related offerings of Vodafone through Zoozoo ads, an IPL contest for Vodafone consumers, online and direct marketing campaigns featuring conversations with the brand through facebook and uploading the popular advertisements on Youtube as well as Zoozoo branding on consumer bills. A mobile and merchandise campaign was also set in motion to enhance the ‘Zoozoo’ experience for consumers with Zoozoo games, MMS and ringtones available for download on their mobile phones and Zoozoo mugs, T-shirts and greeting cards available for purchase online (afaqs 2009). The Campaign in Recent Times While the Zoozoo campaign was initially meant to address specific problems, the widespread success of the campaign prompted the brand to retain the theme and characters for future campaigns as well. Though consumers saw a hiatus in the frequency of Zoozoo ads after the IPL, the characters made a comeback during IPL 3(2010), ICC World Cup 2011 and also during the launch of Vodafone’s 3G services in the country (2011). The idea behind these pauses in brand communication through the new mascot was that that the advertisers didn’t want the target group to become bored of the character and also wanted use the Zoozoos only to communicate important messages to their consumer base at such a time when they were easiest to reach. The Zoozoo campaign during IPL 3 was quite similar to the initial one, only not as successful, however, the recent 3G campaign, featuring a ‘Super Zoozoo’ character as a superhero figure for regular Zoozoos has encountered considerable success. The campaign seeks to portray 3G services as vastly superior to the current norm of 2G (being faster, smarter and better) and convince users to try the service for free. Apart from that, the brand has also established a microsite (http://www.vodafone.in/ipl09/home.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/ipl09/zoozoo.aspx) for Zoozoos and a Facebook page (which has over 117,000 fans) for fans to keep them abreast of the latest developments with Zoozoos. The company has also explored ambient advertising options such as placing Zoozoo statues in prominent public locations such as parks and near traffic junctions and building ‘Super Zoozoo worlds’ at malls in metropolitan cities for customers to experience the 3G services in a Zoozoo theme environment on weekends (Network2media group, 2011). This includes an audio visual environment for visitors with some offbeat entertainment such as sharing a dance floor with ‘Super Zoozoo’ to enrich the consumer experience. Overall Efficacy of the Campaign After the initial launch of the Zoozoo campaign, the character became endeared to many of Vodafone’s target audience members who managed to associate the character with Vodafone, thus showing that the character had succeeded in generating increased brand recognition when the company was teeter-tottering on a shaky foundation in the Indian market. On top of that, the campaign bagged three awards at the Asia Marketing Festival in 2010 (Telecomtalk, 2010). These included a gold for the ‘Most effective use of advertising’ category, a silver for the ‘Best integrated marketing campaign’ and a gold for their online campaign ‘Guess who has a larger fan following than Mickey Mouse’ in the ‘Most effective use of interactive marketing’ category. Apart from being appreciated by peers in the industry, the success of the campaign also caught the attention of the habitually-cynical Indian media. Prominent newspapers all over the country carried multiple features on the success of the campaign. These included, but were not limited to The Times of India, DNA, Indian Express, Financial Express, Hindustan Times, Economic Times and Dainik Bhaskar (the most widely read Indian Dailies) to mention a few. Also, adoring fans flocked to the Facebook page created for Zoozoos to learn more about the latest and apparently most popular apparition in Indian media. The webs page now has over 100,000 fans and saw more visitors during the campaign than the official IPL website itself (which is astounding considering that India is a country where cricket is almost a religion) (afaqs 2009). The Zoozoos also found numerous mentions in non-mainstream media as well. Bloggers constantly discussed any and every aspect of the character on each others’ web pages, Facebook walls, tweets and other such online forums. The company also received huge feedback about the character. The type of feedback was varied, ranging from demands for more Zoozoo merchandise, submissions of new artwork for Zoozoo, recipes for Zoozoo shaped cookies to demands for Zoozoo to be made Prime minister of the country (afaqs 2009). People also organized Zoozoo theme birthday parties, weddings and even included Zoozoo statues in the holy immersion ritual of their deity ‘Lord Ganesh’ during the auspicious season of ‘Ganesh Chaturthi’. The success of the campaign also warranted coverage on prominent television channels in the country. Many channels carried features on the making of the Zoozoo during primetime shows and also managed to sell ad space for these programs. These included channels such as CNBC TV18, News 24, CNN IBN, IBN7, NDTV 24x7, NDTV India and UTVi (Now Bloomberg UTV) (afaqs 2009). The ongoing Super Zoozoo campaign - the more recent version of the campaign - has achieved unprecedented success in the country. The campaign, which was revealed on February 27, during the India vs. England match in the world cup, saw over 100,000 hits for the online video of the advertisement within two days of the launch. However, the impact it has had on 3G subscriptions for Vodafone has not yet been determined (HBL 2011). General Conclusion While perusing the information obtained by analysing the case of the Vodafone Zoozoo campaign, one can clearly see that the campaign was not one that was done by the book. It is usually not advisable for a brand to spend an entire quarter’s marketing budget on a single activity, especially when a similar move had failed them in the recent past. But both Vodafone and Ogilvy India sought to think out of the box and not to be discouraged by the failings of the past. One mistake Vodafone’s predecessor Hutch had made with an almost equally popular mascot was to let it shadow the brand itself. While the advertisements depicting a pug following a boy around were appreciated by Hutchinson Essar’s target audience, it failed to create any significant brand recognition or brand recall during purchase. O&M’s campaign was also successful because of their holistic approach towards advertising during the campaign. The agency was consistent in churning out entertaining as well as informative advertisements in all media using the new character and employed all elements of an ideal marketing mix. Their readiness to adapt as the campaign progressed and innovate new ways of winning over consumers (such as creating an IPL microsite and Facebook page for the campaign, uploading the videos of the ads on Youtube, tailoring the campaign to fit the schedule of the IPL, understanding the need for entertainment through advertisements and the scope for the same) was the crucial factor that made the campaign as successful as it is today. While the initial craze over the Zoozoo character has died down, the fact that it is a popular character among the masses and that it lends its likeability to the parent brand rather than cast a shadow over it will always work in the favour of Vodafone. Just as the Amul butter-girl campaign is no longer a craze in the country, but the messages in the typical advertisements of the company are still recognised and appreciated by the masses, the Zoozoo character will also become less phenomenal but more credible over time provided that the quality of the advertisements is maintained in the future as well. References “Vodafone buys Hutch for $11 B.” SiliconIndia News, 12 February 2007, http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Vodafone_buys_Hutch_for_11_B-nid-34976.html (accessed April 30 2011). Joshi Devina. “Zoozoo: The new Brand ‘endorser’ for Vodafone.” Afaqs, 28 April 2009, http://www.afaqs.com/perl/news/story.html?sid=23893 (accessed 30 April 2011). “Case Study: Zoozoo Story.” Afaqs 2009, http://www.afaqs.com/perl/news/case_studies/download.html?x=lrz&cid=MTM1 &uid=MTEzODAy (accessed 30 April 2011). “Is the Zoozoo Buzz Worth its Weight in Pure Gold?” 4Ps Business and Marketing, 2007, http://www.4psbusinessandmarketing.com/02072009/storyd.asp?sid=2893&pageno=2 (accessed 30 April 2011). Nagpal Neha. “Bates141 Creates ‘Super Zoozoo World’ for Vodafone 3G in Delhi and Mumbai.” Network2Media OOH and more, 18 April 2011, http://www.network2media.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4823:bates141-creates-super-zoozoo-world-for-vodafone-3g-in-delhi-and-mumbai&catid=5:news&Itemid=3 (Accessed 30 April 2011). Bafna Sanjay. “Vodafone’s Zoozoo wins 3 Awards at Asia Marketing Festival.” Telecom Talk, 7 April 2010, http://telecomtalk.info/vodafone-s-zoozoo-wins-3-awards-at-asia-marketing-festival/24111/ (Accessed 30 April 2011). Read More