Remember the times when ZooZoos were all the rage?

Tiny egghead creatures, with balloon-sized bodies and thin limbs, are queuing up before a xerox machine. With one egghead creature guiding each person, they are seen xeroxing their faces, with a message ‘backup your phonebook’ flashing.

This is just one. There were various such ads showcasing the creatures speaking in gibberish language, conveying the benefits of Vodafone’s value-added services (VAS) through their amusing and humorous actions.

When telecommunications company Vodafone Essar (now Vodafone) rolled out these services in 2008, the options included caller tunes, short codes, and special characters.

More than the telecom brand’s unique offering, the brief was to conceptualise a campaign that could position itself or help it stand out in the clutter of IPL advertising, since IPL was the most-watched spectacle across the country. Also, Vodafone Essar was one of the primary sponsors of the cricketing spectacle.

To achieve the objective, Harit Nagpal, marketing director, Vodafone Essar India, and Kavita Nair, associate vice president - marketing communication, approached Ogilvy & Mather once again after the profound success of the ‘Cheeka the pug’ campaign in 2003.

Genesis

Since IPL runs for more than a month, Hephzibah Pathak, who looked after the client servicing responsibilities of O&M, suggested: “What if we do one film every day?” This got the entire team’s excitement peak up, as in those days, three films, or max five films, constituted a campaign.

Subsequently, the team decided to come up with endless stories and produce a series of films.

As a few campaign ideas were presented, the idea to create characters who are very similar to humans but have a different form, and are lovable, funny and adorable, was discussed.

Though Rao only had a vague idea that time, the creative team started to get a better understanding as more and more scripts were discussed.

The sketches of the egghead characters were presented to the client. In Rao’s words, the client was brave enough to approve an idea which no one was sure about initially.

After the idea was approved, Rao reached out to Nirvana Films’ Prakash Varma and Sneha Varma, who were the director and producer, respectively. Varma had previously worked on the Cheeka campaign.

Varma instantly fell in love with the plan. As the process of rolling out the campaign began, one thing was very clear: no 3D animation or CGI (computer-generated imagery).

There was a fear that the idea would be leaked out. Hence, to maintain confidentiality, it was decided to shoot the films in South Africa’s Cape Town.

Varma and Sneha decided to shoot with a certain team in Cape Town, where they also worked together in developing the costumes, etc.

It was decided that the characters would be in black and white. Since the egghead characters had no dialogues, and they were mostly exhibiting expressions, the creative team came up with emoji-like faces.

Then came the costume designing part. According to Rao, it was a new experience for the entire team -- checking the material, its fitting, and also going through multiple changes, in order to give the characters an animated look.

Three weeks went into the pre-production to understand the aspects of costume designing and artwork, according to a 2019 media article.

The article further said that, after the suit was divided into two parts, the body part of the outfit was stuffed with foam in some places. The head was attached separately. If one pays close attention, the creatures’ limbs are thinner, compared to the size of their heads and bodies.

To suit the bill, women, and, sometimes children, were cast as the egghead characters, the article said.

The former national creative director (NCD) of Ogilvy had also mentioned that the props were kept way large to make the creatures appear small. “For example, we made the park bench look bigger than a normal bench which made these egghead creatures (enacted by theatre actors) look very tiny.”

The ad films were shot over 10 days in Cape Town. Every day, three films were shot. Over 10 days, 30 ad films were rolled out.

The second season of IPL was held in Cape Town. Ogilvy’s chief advisor now, Piyush Pandey, too, was present in the city. After viewing the films, he broke into peals of laughter. Nagpal and Nair, too, appreciated the creativity that was reflected in the campaign.

But what was missing was a suitable name for the characters. Tremendous brainstorming followed and around 100 names were scribbled. What stood out was ZooZoo.

“Though there is no specific meaning behind the word, the idea was to come up with a name which sounded cute, lovable and funny,” explained Rao.

When the ad films were released, the response was phenomenal. Vodafone, as further explained in the article, saw an increase in customer base by 3.8 percent in Q1 of 2010.

Vodafone ZooZoos went on to win PETA India's GlitterBox awards where they used humane alternatives to real animals in their ads. Ogilvy India also won an Integrated Grand Prix and a Film Craft award at Goafest 2010.

Neo@Ogilvy, which is the digital arm of Ogilvy & Mather, and managed ZooZoo’s Facebook fan page, as stated by a 2012 Zenith report, highlighted that the page had clocked around 2.6 million views. This surpassed expectations, compared to IPL T20.com’s 0.5 million views.

The report also stated that the FB fans of the egghead-like characters touched the 3,07,072 mark as of June 17, 2009.

“I don't know what we were thinking at that time, but how do we make the creatures to look like they aren’t people who are wearing costumes? A lot of people, after watching the films, felt that this was a work of animation. This indeed was a great compliment for us,” said Rao.

Read More: Bow, Wow: How Cheeka the pug made Hutch a household name