ZooZoos are advertisement characters promoted by Vodafone during the Indian Premier League Season 2 (IPL). Zoozoos are created as 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.

Each zoozoo commercial uses a story which is enacted by these endearing creatures. At a glance, Zoozoos look like archaic animated forms. But these are in fact real thin professional ballet artists donning masks. zoozoos hardly speak and mostly squeak which goes perfectly with their child like reactions to everything (watch zoozoo teasing the crocodile with a fish!) The innocent world of these cute ET like characters where the ZOOzoos laugh out loud and cry outloud is what fills our heart with warmth and laughter. So, dont be surprised if your doctor tells you to watch Zoozoo videos in order to de-stress!!!

Creating ZooZoos

Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that handles Vodafone advertisements, were asked by Vodafone to create a series of 30 advertisement which could be aired each day during the IPL Season 2. According to Rajiv Rao, executive creative director (South Asia) of Ogilvy & Mather, that they “wanted to make real people look as animated as possible” and hence employed Bangalore-based Nirvana Films to shoot these ads in Cape Town, South Africa.The ads were actually made by Praksh Varma and his wife Sneha. The whole idea was coined by him and so are the story lines.The name was chosen by Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy India.The ads were shot by Prakash Varma and produced by Nirvana Films within a record time of 10 days and the pre-production to shoot happened within a month and cost around 3 crores rupees.

Making of a zoozoo

The Zoozoo’s are in fact real small-bodied, thin women covered in layers of white fabric.Each facial expression was made of rubber and pasted on the actors rather than done through animation, as this could have enhanced the time and cost for shoot.The effect was achieved by a variety of methods including choosing the right material for the body suits to ensure that there were no wrinkles when the characters moved, shooting the footage at lower framerates and keeping backgrounds simple in terms of details and the use of a neutral tone of grey. The sets were made larger than life to make the characters look small as the producers could not take children as the schedule of shooting was odd.

The zoozoo’s were split in two parts – the body and the head. The body was made using a special material stuffed with foam in some places (notably around the stomach) while the head was created using using a harder material called Perspex.

They’re all real

So are they animated characters? Zoozooz look like animations but actually they are real people wearing body suits. All the Zoozoo characters are played by theatre actors wearing tight body suits stuffed with foam to create round bodies and a large head made of a material called Perspex. The expressions on the faces of the Zoozooz, deliberately simplistic and limited in number, were all made in rubber and pasted onto their heads. The actors couldn’t even see through the large heads which they were wearing.

Zoozooz had thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Though the fact is that all the adult actors were used for shooting of these ads instead of the kids which would have been the perfect fit. So to make Zoozooz look small in size, big sets were created. Cinematically size was the trick. To make the Zoozooz look smaller, the speed of shooting was altered and the ads were shot in a high-speed format.

Zoozoo’s: More Popular in India Than Swine Flu or Smiley

Zoozoo’s the latest Craze in the Ad World. These absolutely adorable Vodafone ad characters for the IPL season are capturing people’s hearts faster than you can say Zoozoo. There are already over 181,150 Zoozoo fans just on Facebook (including me) and adding every minute. They are amongst the most searched videos on YouTube and the most talked, watched, discussed, loved ads in the country.

If you thought Swine flu is the only thing being talked about in India, think again. You’ll find Zoozoo’s everywhere, on TV, in papers, on billboards, on the internet, on YouTube. People are talking about them on radio, in parties and even in meetings! They definitely have taken away the limelight away from IPL* or the cricketers. In a country where cricket is like a religion, the Vodafone company has hit the right cord with these ads releasing around IPL.

Response to ZooZoos

Excellent Response to ZooZoos

The campaign took the nation by storm. Everywhere people were talking about this campaign. There were as many talks about this campaign as there were about the matches being played. Now this is a big statement considering that cricket is nothing less than a religion in India. So what was so special about this campaign? Were their value added services so unique? Actually vodafone is providing most of these services from quite some time, so there was nothing new about these services. So what was different about this campaign? The answer is Zoozoo.

Zoozoo was marketed very well. IPL provided a great platform for the Zoozoo commercials. People got to see various funny zoozoo advertisements. And the strategy of releasing the advertisements on a daily basis made people stick to their television sets even during the breaks. And also, people didn’t get bored watching the same ad over and over again.

Zoozoo’s are helping the business for telephone services of the vodafone company. The company is more creative in the business like attracting any kind of age by its comedy character shows in the television that makes any body laugh, zoozoos becomes fan of every one in India also.

The Vodafone Zoozoos are sure to go down in the marketing history of the world as the cutest and the most memorable characters on TV. The Zoozoo Ads were designed by O&M as a part of IPL sponsorship campaign for Vodafone.

Vodafone launched a new character named zoozoo to promote their value added services. Vodafone zoozoo character is getting more popularity among all kind of people.

Like Vodafone’s Happy to Help and Vodafone dog (Hutch dog), newly created zozo is also a hit. The best thing about Vodafone is their attractive and innovative promos.