I realize that the ad is using sex to sell itself, but its still brilliant!!

Buzz behind Zoozoos – Everyone is talking about Zoozoo these days. Even me for that matter!! And you know what this is creating my friends? Its creating a buzz … a buzz unlike any other in the market these days. People love it, people hate it … but people definitely talk about it. Vodafone has a winner here – or so one might think.

Industry situation – With mobile penetration in India going to touch around 90% by 2014 (thats 1 billion mobile phones!!!), the revenues from simply voice based services are going to trickle down. What were considered to be luxury services on mobiles (missed call alerts, caller ring back tunes, et al) are now considered necessary services. Living in a country which has multiple mobile service provider also means that all these service providers have to invest for customer acquisition. Which means even lesser charges from voice based services.

Jumping the gun – The only way voice based revenues could be increased is to increase the Value Added Services (VAS) part. Before we go any further, What do you mean by VAS?? Don’t worry, even I didn’t know about them a few months back, I worked in an IT firm making solutions for Telecom Operators and I had no clue what they meant by VAS!! Thanks to those beautiful ads, now I do!! But why will people buy these services, how can they buy them if they do not even know what they means?!? Hence the need for awareness for these VAS was recognized by Harit Nagpal (Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone India). Ogilvy was given the charge of creating the buzz for Vodafone.

The Buzz Explained – A good buzz can be dissected to have these elements

• Clarity of message – Each ad ends with the particular VAS feature. The message is clear.
• Simplicity – Ogilvy’s Rajiv Rao, in charge of this promotion knew that the entire idea had to be simple and yet stupefying to cut across all ages and convey the idea. All the ads depict this minimalistic approach.
• Stand out – The egg shaped head; it stands out. The cute shape of those zoozoos; it stands out.
• Variety – A single idea can also cause a buzz, but over a period of time it dies down, simply because people cannot keep on talking about the same thing again and again. e.g – pink chaddi campaign. You need fodder for people to talk during train journeys!!
• Right time, Right medium – IPL for TV, Youtube for online.  Zoozoo is everywhere. An nice article by Sushrut Bidwai can be found here.

It’s a great campaign, and I would not be surprised if this turns out to be a case study in a few years. As I finish this post, a question still remains in my head – what will happen if the Zoozoo’s buzz transcends Vodafone VAS and moves on to something totally different (e.g I saw a political ad with the zoozoo theme)?

Another style of earning money would be google ads. So please do not be pissed if you see those on my blog in some days. Heres to turning a cost center into a revenue center

Come to the streets of Mumbai, there you see a different picture. Idea ads have celebrities declaring proudly, that they have an Idea Mumbai No., and that makes them a Mumbaikar. The niche is well defined and it does have an appeal to it. I consider myself a Mumbaikar, but would I go to the extent of getting an Idea Mumbai No. . But it’s a good ad nonetheless.

So in one case, Idea is seen generalizing their service offering, whereas in the other, the same offering (viz., the phone number that you get) is a way of defining and segregating the masses. Interesting, wouldn’t you say? Kind of like Glocalisation.

And voila!! You can be a casanova as well. Here’s a video demo of that piece!!

Then again … I am an optimist

And then it struck me. How true is this? Especially for IIM grads . When we were at IIM-Indore, we had this urge to name almost all initiatives with the letter I. And all the initiatives would have some words starting from I to connote the message, mantra, dictum, et al.
Always it was something like ideation, incubation, inspiration, innovation, etc. etc. … you got the drift right?

What we did not think was I for Implementation. That word strikes us right in the middle of our eyes the moment we start our work, since up till that point the majority of us are involved in theory and not practice. Hence ideas, innovations, strategies, etc… and not roll-out plans, implementation plans, work schedules. Even as I am typing these words, the earlier ones seem more glamorous than the later. Its not that we made out elaborate plans and never fulfilled them when we were students, we managed to get them done as well. Just, that it amuses me that most of us are geared to do the strategies rather than the execution.

Interesting, huh … sort of like Lions for Lambs , just a 6.2 on IMDB.