(This is a guest post from Naman Sarawagi (Twitter). Naman is a web 2.0 enthusiast. He has worked with Onyomo.com and Adbhai.com in the past, and now works as a copywriter at Webchutney Studios.)
ZooZoos are advertisement characters promoted by Vodafone during the Indian Premier League Season 2 (IPL). Zoozoos are white, ghost-like creatures with ballooned bodies and egg heads who are used to promote various value added services of Vodafone. These ads though look animated are actually real humans in the Zoozoo costumes. The ads were created by Ogilvy & Mather, an agency that handles Vodafone advertisements and the films were shot by Bangalore based Nirvana Films in Cape Town, South Africa.
Here is an analysis of the various social media tools used in the campaign –
- YouTube: In just one month the channel became 24th most Subscribed Channel (All Time- India) with 1,741 subscribers. The number is pretty low but given the low penetration of high speed internet in India this is appreciable. The channel has 129 in-links coming from various blogs. Most viewed ad and also the public favourite in conversations was Vodafone Busy Message generating a total of 197,837 views. We must consider that multiple copies of this video are available on YouTube and other video sharing sites so the real no. of views is pretty high.
- Facebook: Official fan club on FaceBook has 294,669 fans. The Zoozoo quiz app is the only attempt made to engage the public around the Zoozoo characters. The quiz is based on identifying “What kind of Zoozoo are you?”. The same app is available on the official site. FaceBook was the centre of all web activities with all videos and the microsite pointing to this page.
- Twitter: The efforts on Twitter were a complete fail with only 327 followers. People did tweet about how they loved Zoozoos but no one really followed the official tweets. The sole reason was that the content was not engaging. It was not a value add-on. The tweets were simply links to the various videos. Instead, had there been some ‘Zoozoo facts’ and insight into the making of the ads, more conversation could have been created. The Indian users on Twitter are mostly media and technology people who have an appetite to digest more behind the scene content and more value content. A simple tweet like, “The total cost of production was Rs. 3 crores” could have gone a long way in retweets and thereby making the conversation and engagement truly viral.
SMSGupShup: Interestingly, the Zoozoo group on Indian group SMS website SMSGupshup did see some participation with 3,847 members (followers) in just 30 posts (tweets). The conversation here was not as in Twitter, it included quiz and trivia, hence the reasonable number of followers. My guess is that this was an official group but the campaign did not promote this. Take a close observation of the posts and you will notice that this group is actually trying to take feedback on the campaign, which is quite an appreciable step.
- Official Microsite: The official site does not appear in the top 10 results in Google search for “Vodafone Zoozoo”. Instead the site VodafoneZoozoo.in appears on top which was able to garner a lot of traffic. The peak for traffic on both the official and the unofficial site was 11 May, around the middle of the season. An outbreak of traffic can easily be seen marking the beginning of the campaign. The microsite got a total of around 90 in-links from various blogs. Whereas the unofficial site got 73 in-links which is pretty good in comparison. The official site has merchandise, the ads and the quiz app. So basically the only engagement was the quiz app.
- Orkut (Unofficial): Given the mass adoption of Orkut and even after being the default Socio-net for Indians, activity for this campaign on Orkut was mostly silent because this was not promoted officially. It has 49,637 members on this community, which is pretty low. MTV Roadies had made a perfect use of Orkut for promotion. Ogilvy should have borrowed some insights from there. The reason for not considering Orkut might be that Orkut doesn’t have these options of creating brand pages etc. A lesser accepted reason i believe is that media people are suave and have mostly graduated from Orkut to Facebook. So instead of understanding user behavior, they consider themselves as the user, which is a blunder in marketing. When using social media you have to put the product where the audience is. Doing it the other way around is less effective and costlier as well.
- Google Search: No points for guessing, “Vodafone Zoozoo” has been a busy search term throughout the season. “Zoozoo Wallpapers” saw outbreak on Google search in India with Delhi and Maharashtra leading. The last day of IPL, 24th May, saw a peak. So merchandise did see enough interest generated.
- Conversation: A lot of conversation was generated around the fact that the Zoozoos were not animated. The production agency claims that the high cost of animation was the reason for using real humans with body fit costumes. Overall the sentiment of conversation was positive biased on blogs and microblogs. It is amazing to note that on the blogosphere “Zoozoo” created a buzz equal to the “IPL”. An ad campaign generating conversation equal to an International event could be considered as India having its own Super Bowl.
- Media People Verdict: The media and ad fraternity has given mostly mixed views. Some quotes below:
Rounded edges, weird sounds yet decipherable language, and fluidity of movement add to the ‘innocence of feelings’ in a world that is getting more and more ‘manipulative and angular’ in thought…We are all familiar with the standard measures of advertising effectiveness — memorability, message comprehension, persuasion and likeability. However, getting people to talk and discuss the advertising gives it a multiplier effect that helps to reach and impact more people than before. – Madhukar Sabnavism, country head, discovery and planning, Ogilvy and Mather, India
“They have a certain madness to them, which makes them likeable and memorable.”- Brijesh Jacob, managing partner, White Canvas.
“I think Vodafone has made delightful stories in the past with humans as well. Maybe I’m too old, so I didn’t particularly like the Zoozoos personally.” – Mythili Chandrasekar, senior vice-president and executive planning director, JWT India
This coverage on Afaqs! has 275 comments, mostly positive. This is the highest number of comments on any post on Afaqs! and i don’t need to check the stats before is say that.
Key takeaways: Campaign Successful? Yes. Period.
Social media was not fully tapped as engagement around the campaign was missing. They could have done better than a quiz app. When in India, you cannot ditch Orkut, yet.
