Zoozoo Mania

Advertisers, over the years have used every medium available to promote their ideas, products and services - television, radio, print, internet, hot air balloons, blimps, cartoon characters and what not. When one has creativity in the mind and zeal to be unique in all aspects, this paints the dawn for a revolutionary idea. The idea that (as a popular advertisement quotes) “can change your life!”

One such radical change came into the world of advertising during the second season of the Indian Premier League. During this season, Vodafone came up with a new series of advertisements, featuring egg-headed, white ghost-like creatures, with ballooned bodies. Popularly known as Zoozoos, these adorable characters clowned around delightfully in the advertisements, promoting the various value-added services of the company. After the cute little pug that followed its master everywhere, these new characters caught the people’s fancy and they became an instant hit.

The most remarkable thing about the Zoozoos is that they are not animated characters. In fact, they are real human beings covered in layers of white fabric to give them a chubby and animated look. As animation would be very costly and time-consuming, real people were pressed into the program.

The advertisements were created by one of the top advertising agencies of the country, Ogilvy and Mather. Rajiv Rao, National creative Director, O&M said that they “wanted to make real people as animated as possible”. For this very reason, the filming was offered to a Bangalore based production house, Nirvana Films. The entire shooting was done in Cape Town, South Africa. The studio sets were larger-than-life with windows, shelves and street lamps spray-painted onto the sets. Most unbelievably, the Zoozoo head is seven times the size of a normal head! Each facial expression was made of rubber and pasted on, depending on the emotion to be portrayed.

A series of 30 ad films were shot within a record time of 10 days. The pre-production shoot was done within a month and cost incurred was around Rs. 3 crores. The films were shot in lower frame rates- 20 frames per second instead of the usual 25 frames, to make the Zoozoo movements comical. So far the words of the Zoozoos is concerned, one should not strain his ears too hard to figure them out. Gibberish was spoken by two people and recorded at a great speed to make the Zoozoos sound like high-pitched chipmunks and suit their movements.

These charming little creatures became a common favourite among the Indian people, especially the youth. This inclination can be understood from the huge fan following on various social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Twitter etc. There are more than 200,000 fans and this number grows daily. Lakhs of people viewed these ads in YouTube. Today, the market is flocked with various Zoozoo merchandise like pens, bags, keychains, T-shirts etc. So, after the IPL ended, even though these little sweethearts ceased to appear on the television, we still continued having a glimpse of them at every nook and corner with the common line- I LOVE ZOOZOOS!
With the commencement of the IPL 3, people expectantly waited for their dear Zoozoos to show up again with their amusing actions. However, in the third season, the Zoozoos failed to appeal to the people the way they did earlier; partly because of the tough competition faced from the hordes of new and creative advertisements and partly because people had already got enough of them. Maybe this time, Ibibo’s ‘Social Gaming’ and Idea’s ‘Ungli Cricket’ caught the people’s fancy more. Anyways, let us raise a toast to one of the most successful ad campaign of all time. I don’t know what others feel, but I shall always continue to be charmed by these 'Sweet Idiots'.