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are advertisement characters promoted

by Vodafone since the Indian Premier League Season 2 (IPL).

ZooZoos are white creatures with ballooned bodies and egg
heads who are used to promote various value added services
of Vodafone. Although these characters look animated, they are
actually humans in Zoozoo costumes. The ads were created
by Ogilvy & Mather, the agency
handling Vodafoneadvertisements. The ads were shot
by Bangalore based Nirvana Films in Cape Town, South Africa.

History

The ZooZoo idea was conceived by Rajiv Rao . He is also the mind
behind the story lines[1] and the name.[2] The ads were shot by Prakash
Varma and produced by Nirvana Films within a record time of 10 days.
The pre-production work happened within a month and cost around 3
crores rupees.[3][4]

[edit]Making

Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that handles Vodafone advertisements,

was asked by Vodafone to create a series of 30 advertisements which
could be aired each day during the IPL Season 2. According to Rajiv Rao,
National Creative Director of Ogilvy & Mather, they "wanted to make
real people look as animated as possible". They employed Bangalore-
based Nirvana Films to shoot these ads in Cape Town, South Africa
through the Cape Town based production house, Platypus Productions.

The Zoozoos are small-bodied, thin women covered in layers of white

fabric.[3] Each facial expression is made of rubber and pasted on the
actors to cut down on the time and cost for shoot.[1][3] The effect was
achieved by a variety of methods including choosing the right material
for the body suits to ensure that there were no wrinkles when the
characters moved, shooting the footage at lower framerates and
keeping backgrounds simple in terms of details and the use of a neutral
tone of grey. The sets were made larger than life to make the
characters look small as the producers could not take children as the
schedule of shooting was odd.[3]

The Zoozoos were split in two parts - the body and the head. The body
was made using a special material stuffed with foam in some places
(notably around the stomach) while the head was created using a
harder material called Perspex.[5]

[edit]Public response

The ads were a hit among the Indian audience. This can be gauged from
the huge fan following on social networking sites such
as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter.[6] There are more than 200 pages on
ZooZoos having over 200000 fans, growing daily.[7][8]The ads were also
viewed by thousands of people on Youtube.[9]

Vodafone received the first People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals (PETA) 2009 Glitterbox Award, for replacing the Pug with more
humane alternatives in their ads.[10][11]

RN Podar School, Santa Cruz, Mumbai is planning to develop an

animated character, inspired by the ZooZoos to attract students and
will be used to teach Environmental Studies (EVS) to class I students.

Vodafone 3G's Super ZooZoo which was introduced as a symbol of

Vodafone 3G launch in india was bought to life using a Kinect and
making it dance to Reggae. The 3G adverstisements are inspired by text
messages of South Indian Actor Rajnikanth and his high-tech drama in
movies and likewise.[12