Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Zoozoo overkill this weekend on your TV
Vodafone Zoozoo Marathon will be aired on 20 channels this weekend
It's not over yet – the Zoozoo invasion. Come this weekend, the Vodafone Zoozoos will hijack television screens. All the 29 Zoozoo ads will be aired back to back on several channels over the weekend. In fact, Vodafone has named this property the 'Zoozoo Marathon'.
Vodafone will air the marathon on Colors, SET Max, B4U Movies, B4U Music, WB, MTV, AXN, VH1, NDTV 24x7, NDTV India, NDTV Profit, Saakshi, Maa TV, Asianet, Asianet Plus, Malayala Manorama News, Suvarna, Raj TV, Sun News and Siripoli. Channels will start promoting this today onwards.
On Colors, the marathon will be aired during the movie Golmaal Returns. "While we have done several innovations with our advertisers on shows such as Bigg Boss – integrating brands into the programme – this is of a different kind, where only Zoozoo ads will be aired for about 700 seconds," says Simran Hoon, national sales head, Colors.
The Zoozoo series was unveiled during the second season of the IPL, one of the strongest platforms on television, and continued throughout the tournament. Besides, the ads have been launched across media such as out of home, Internet, print and in-store, and enjoyed extensive media coverage, too. Maxus is the media agency which has devised this innovation.
However, Nagpal believes that although the characters may have become extraordinarily popular, not everybody has watched all the Zoozoo acts and this is just the right opportunity for them.
When asked what the objective of this media activity was, Nagpal says, "It is a differentiated way of driving salience for the brand – and very quickly too. We could have aired 29 ads over two weeks but this is a better platform where the ads will be viewed by appointment and not by accident."
Besides, Nagpal thinks that the ads have themselves become content. So, while Vodafone is making a point, the viewers are having fun.
In September 2007, in order to announce the transition of Hutch to Vodafone, the latter tied up with STAR. According to the arrangement, all the STAR Network channels aired only Vodafone ads for 24 hours to announce that 'Hutch is now Vodafone'.