Suspenseful ad! What is Vodafone/Zoozoo ad upto?
Yesterday one of my friend’s status messages read "Hmm…What good are Zoozoo ads with subtitles. No fun!!!". It seems that this time Vodafone has a different strategy for advertisement with Zoozoo’s. It probably wants to focus more on the ad-brand rather than the cute characters that stole the lime-light last Cricket season. Well, certainly the 'curiosity' factor of these type of suspenseful ad's is expected to be high and they are intended to gain high attention but certainly awkward during the 40 second break in-between of a bowling over or wicket of a very exciting match.
A year back, Vodafone’s media strategy to air these ads during IPL(somewhat)worked for the brand but the downside was that the characters were always a bigger story than the actual brand. It’s hard to digest but the audience has a minimal capacity to understand features while the characters take away the limelight with their cuteness and novelness. Realizing the same fact Vodafone now has the ads in a suspenseful manner to discover the brand offerings rather than just hammer them out one after the other like Vodafone did last year.
In general, if the graph of ‘Audience involvement in advertisement’ is plotted against the ‘India’s chances of winning’ that should ideally look something close to the graph shown below.
Though honestly nobody would prefer advertisements in-between any match this graph just plots the probable curve of audience involvement in advertisements once ad comes infront of you. But the case of suspenseful advertisements though probably can be a bit different. The same graph can be plotted as shown below.
People would certainly be involved at a greater percentage if the advertisement creates a suspense.
In this particular case though, Zoozoo’s were talk of the town because the advertisement was creatively done with exceptionally cute characters. The cute characters too were very cleverly done. There were (young/old)male Zoozoo's along with female Zoozoo's and kid Zoozoo’s thus creating a connection with all the age groups and genders. The advertisement was in white and black with a hint of the Vodafone red only to be used as props, emphasizing on the story. These characters inturn had a funny story to narrate the intention of Vodafone but without any narration or sounds other than actions, squeaks and mummers from Zoozoo’s. The Vodafone logo appeared separately only after the advertisement in a bold red background. Unfortunately a lot of people by that time(Vodafone showed the banner) probably kept busy recollecting the funny incident that happened with their cute Zoozoo’s. Hence the banner got ignored and hence did the brand.
All in all definitely a suspenseful ad with Zoozoo is a ‘kind of’ a strategic move that Vodafone has tried to experiment with. Keeping the sound track intact as it was earlier, they seem to have just added an element of suspense assisted with subtitles for audience only to understand the suspense. Usually with a suspenseful ad you somewhere feel that the commercial leads you right to the climax and then kind of leaves you hanging. It works best if these ad’s leave you with a message that if you want to know what happens next you will have to watch the World Cup Match to see the end of the commercial. Though it would work most of the times, there is a high chance that the advertisement might work better if the suspense is emotional and more involving than an imaginary character(Zoozoo) creating suspense about another imaginary character(alien). Even if Vodafone fails, they will just get rid of Zoozoo’s and create something more involving.
Anyway, what according to you might work best for Zoozoo's to create suspense?
A year back, Vodafone’s media strategy to air these ads during IPL(somewhat)worked for the brand but the downside was that the characters were always a bigger story than the actual brand. It’s hard to digest but the audience has a minimal capacity to understand features while the characters take away the limelight with their cuteness and novelness. Realizing the same fact Vodafone now has the ads in a suspenseful manner to discover the brand offerings rather than just hammer them out one after the other like Vodafone did last year.
In general, if the graph of ‘Audience involvement in advertisement’ is plotted against the ‘India’s chances of winning’ that should ideally look something close to the graph shown below.
Though honestly nobody would prefer advertisements in-between any match this graph just plots the probable curve of audience involvement in advertisements once ad comes infront of you. But the case of suspenseful advertisements though probably can be a bit different. The same graph can be plotted as shown below.
People would certainly be involved at a greater percentage if the advertisement creates a suspense.
In this particular case though, Zoozoo’s were talk of the town because the advertisement was creatively done with exceptionally cute characters. The cute characters too were very cleverly done. There were (young/old)male Zoozoo's along with female Zoozoo's and kid Zoozoo’s thus creating a connection with all the age groups and genders. The advertisement was in white and black with a hint of the Vodafone red only to be used as props, emphasizing on the story. These characters inturn had a funny story to narrate the intention of Vodafone but without any narration or sounds other than actions, squeaks and mummers from Zoozoo’s. The Vodafone logo appeared separately only after the advertisement in a bold red background. Unfortunately a lot of people by that time(Vodafone showed the banner) probably kept busy recollecting the funny incident that happened with their cute Zoozoo’s. Hence the banner got ignored and hence did the brand.
All in all definitely a suspenseful ad with Zoozoo is a ‘kind of’ a strategic move that Vodafone has tried to experiment with. Keeping the sound track intact as it was earlier, they seem to have just added an element of suspense assisted with subtitles for audience only to understand the suspense. Usually with a suspenseful ad you somewhere feel that the commercial leads you right to the climax and then kind of leaves you hanging. It works best if these ad’s leave you with a message that if you want to know what happens next you will have to watch the World Cup Match to see the end of the commercial. Though it would work most of the times, there is a high chance that the advertisement might work better if the suspense is emotional and more involving than an imaginary character(Zoozoo) creating suspense about another imaginary character(alien). Even if Vodafone fails, they will just get rid of Zoozoo’s and create something more involving.
Anyway, what according to you might work best for Zoozoo's to create suspense?
