The website has downloadable ringtones, videos, wallpapers, screensavers etc.

This allows for users to spread the message across and thus more marketing can be achieved.

Orkut community, facebook group and Youtube channel all goes a long way in spreading the word across.

Promotional planning through Persuasion Matrix

In order to develop an effective advertising campaign, a firm must select a right spokesperson to deliver a compelling message through appropriate channels or media. Source, message and channel factors are controllable elements in communication model. The persuasion matrix helps marketers see how each controllable element interacts with the consumers response process. The matrix has two sets of variables, independent variable and controllable components of the communication process. Marketers can choose the person or source who delivers the message, the type of message appeal used, and the channel or medium. And although they cannot control their receiver, they can select their target audience. The destination variable is included because the initial message recipient may pass on information to others, such as friends or associates through word of mouth. Promotional planners need to know how decisions about each independent variable influence the stages of the response hierarchy so that they dont enhance one stage at the expense of another. A humorous message may get attention but results in decreased comprehension if consumers fail to process its content. Many ads that use humour, sexual appeals, or celebrities capture consumers attention but result in poor recall of the brand name or message. The following example, which corresponds to the number for given parameter, illustrates the decisions that can be evaluated with the Persuasion matrix. 1) Receiver/Comprehension: Marketers must know their target market to make their messages clear and understandable. A less educated person may have more difficulty interpreting a complicated message. Jargon may be unfamiliar to some receivers. The more marketers know about the target marketers know about target market, the more they see which words, symbols and expressions their customers understand. To launch Zoozoo, the receiver targeted by Vodafone was Television Audience. 2) Channel/Presentation: A top rated prime-time TV program is seen by nearly 12 million households each week. But the main important point is how well they reach the marketers target audience.

For Vodafone, they used television commercials as channel for reaching the target audience. 3) Message/yielding: Marketers generally try to create agreeable messages that lead to positive feelings towards the product or service. Humorous messages often put consumers put in good mood and evoke positive feelings that may become associated with the brand being advertised. Music adds emotion that makes consumers more receptive to the message. Many advertisers use explicit sexual appeals designed to arouse consumers or suggest they can enhance their attractiveness to opposite sex. Vodafone used different types of ads to promote different value added services using zoozoos. The various services promoted through ads were magic box, stock alerts, fashion tips, group SMS etc. 4) Source/attention: The large number of adds we are bombarded with every day makes it difficult for advertisers to break through the clutter. Marketers deal with this problem by using sources who will attract the target audiences attention actors, athletes, rock stars or attractive models. It is the most important part wherein Vodafone launched an alien creature zoozoo which emotes like humans and leads simple lives.

Impact of Zoozoo on Vodafone revenues

Vodafone reported an increase of 23 percent in revenue at constant exchange rates, and 33 percent, taking into account exchange rate fluctuations. The revenues included a 7 percent benefit of revenue from their stake in Indus Towers. Data revenues for Vodafone remained flat quarter on quarter, but were up 30 percent year on year. Strangely enough, messaging (SMS) revenues declined quarter on quarter.

However, much like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular, Vodafone India reported a decline in ARPU, impacted by the mobile termination rate cut.

In terms of Minutes of Use, Vodafone clocked 10% higher minutes of use, at 71,775 million minutes, up from 65,276 million minutes used in Q4-09.

Of its Total Customer Base, 93.2 percent was Pre-paid. The companys average customer base grew by 56 percent year on year, on launching in seven new circles.

Net additions for the company declined quarter on quarter - Vodafone India added 7.68 million subscribers in the quarter, as opposed to 7.83 million subscribers added in the previous quarter.

Much like other operators, Vodafone India has suggested that usage per customer declined on account of multiple SIM usage, which is being attributed to the free minutes and free SIM cards being given by operators, particularly in new circles.

The above picture clearly depicts how the ZooZoo advertisements have helped in increasing the customer base for Vodafone in the last quarter with a sharp increase of 3.8%, from 17.5% to 21.7%. Vodafone reports churn on an annualized basis, and the company saw a pre-paid churn of 26.3 percent churn for the last four quarters, with a Prepaid churn of 26.4 percent, and a post-paid churn of 25.3 percent.

Zoozoo Survey

The form above was used to perform a survey among 1st year students of SIMSREE.

Following questions were asked in the survey. Their response is analysed accordingly.

Q.1 Did Zoozoo enhance vodafone's brand image? The response to the above yielded the below pie.

As we can see in the pie, there is a clear majority of people (88%) who think that Zoozoo went a long way in adding value to Vodafone as a brand. This is in accordance with the hype that zoozoo created in the market. Vodafone as a brand seemed to be more popular.

Q.2 If you are a vodafone user, have you started using any Value Added Service(VAS) service after watching these ads. The pie below shows the response of the people. The blue region of the pie shows the percentage of people who do not use Vodafone as their mobile service. Remaining 59% actually used Vodafone and orange, red regions together denotes that.

As we can see in the pie diagram, out of the total respondents 17% actually used Vodafone and subscribed to a value added service after the zoozoo ads. If we discount the respondents who did not use Vodafone, we get a figure of 29% people who actually started using a VAS service after the zoozoo ads. This is quite a significant figure for a SBU which is currently in Cash Cow quadrant of BCG matrix.

Q.3 Which ZooZoo Ad do you like the most? 4 options were given to the respondents along with an Any Other option, based on them the following pie was a result of the responses obtained.

As seen from the pie, most of the services are liked by the customers. The pie is more or less equally divided. This goes to show that many zoozoo ads were made an impact on the minds of customers. They actually related the corresponding zoozoo ad to the VAS service.

Q.4 Do you think Zoozoo is better than earlier Pug as Vodafone mascot? This question resulted in respondents generating a pie which looked like this

This is a an interesting result found, here we see that although majority of people liked zoozoo ads over the pug ads, but there were still 31% of respondents who thought Pug as brand mascot did better justice to the brand than the latest Zoozoos. This goes to show that it is difficult to erase the impact that pug had made on minds of people. Some of the pug ads remain etched in the minds.

Q.5 Should the zoozoo ad campaign have spaced out their ads over a longer period of time, instead of showing a number of different ads in a very short perod of time? The question resulted in a pie which looked like the one below.

This question also resulted in an interesting response. 59% of respondents actually thought that Vodafones strategy to show the zoozoo ads in a very short space of time actually was the right way to go. 29% of the respondents thought they could have gone with a strategy of showing the ads over a longer duration of time. A small percent of respondents remained undecided on the question.

Recommendations

Most of messages of the zoozoo ads were written in English in the end. This made it difficult for the rural audiences to connect with. They had difficulty in understanding the VAS services. Rural audiences could have been shown with messages in Hindi or any other regional language.

A lot of zoozoo ads were shown in a very short span of time. Although this allowed zoozoo as a brand to get famous, it did not grow revenues by a very major margin. Audiences were bombarded with around 25-30 ads in a very short period of time, they could not retain all kinds of VAS services in their minds.

A phased release of each of the storylines of zoozoo would have retained attraction for more amount of time and also have generated greater awareness among public. This could have involved a strategy where Vodafone released around 5 ads every 15 days.

Zoozoos had become more popular than Vodafone itself as a brand. This was since major period of the ads were animation which did not involve Vodafone name, while it was only in the end that Vodafone schemes related to the ad were shown. This made zoozoo ads more of entertainment for the audiences.

Using zoozoo and pug in the same ad could generate more interest among audiences, they will be able to relate to traditional image that hutch had created and new sensation that zoozoo has created could also be taken advantage of.

References and Bibliography

1. Survey Data

Survey Data.xlsx

2. www.afaqs.com 3. www.economictimes.com 4. www.wordpress.com 5. www.marketingpractice.blogspot.com 6. www.icmrindia.org