Comment on the importance of Zoozoo campaigns inVodafone’s marketing communication.
Discuss your views regarding the effective use of mediamix in Vodafone marketing communications?
Suggest changes you think Vodafone should adopt in itscommunication strategies in the present scenario?
- Using Hierarchy Of Effect Model Highlight The Role Of Marketing Communication Over The Past 15 Years To Build Brand V 1 (671.65 KiB) Viewed 15 times
consumers about what mobile telephony was all about? (Rai, 2006). Therefore, most of the advertisements, such as "Can I call STD"; "Can I use my phone in a lift?"; "What is airtime", educated the customers about the advantages of mobile phones' services. It was also the first cellular company to establish national roaming in the year 1996 (Rai, 2006). Max Touch to Orange The year 2001 saw Max Touch become Orange. The company had to redefine the Indian communication strategies modifying its approach from the conventional educative approach to a more competitive approach (Rai, 2006). As most of the brands during this period were city or state specific and not national, most of the marketing and advertising campaigns of Orange were accomplished without employing the broadcast medium (Rai, 2006). Advertising in the form of billboards and print media were used, engaging customers through focused localized campaigns. Apart from this the company also adopted strategic sponsorships to the events that held great resonance with the middle-class customers. This helped in transforming the consumer perception of the brand with customers associating it with leadership and innovation. Introducing "Hutch" Pug During 2000-2001, Hutchis group acquired a number of different telecom players, primarily in Delhi, Kolkata and Gujarat regions to increase its hold in the Indian market. Subsequently, Hutchison Essar Limited launched its umbrella brand "Hutch" in the year 2002 with a new mascot, "Hutch" pug. A series of advertisements flashed the electronic as well as print media, communicating the arrival of a telecom service supported by very strong network coverage an attribute that was not ideally achievable by most telecom service providers. The advertisements featured a pug following a small boy in most unlikely places. The tagline given was "Wherever you go, our network follows". This simple message communicated through pug with the backdrop of a beautiful song, helped generating interest in Hutch brand. A series of advertisements highlighting the attribute were aired by Hutchison Essar Limited. Apart from the advertisements, Hutchison Essar also promoted brand "Hutch" by introducing a number of value-added services such as cricket scores, stock market information, Hutch World (GPRS service), Hutch Alive and Hutch4Help. They also came up with "Chhota Recharge" advertisements, highlighting the small value recharge coupons. Towards the end of 2005, Hutch changed the colour of the tristar in its logo from orange to pink. Once again, Hutch adopted a simple and minimalist approach to communication by advertising on billboards that simply said "Bye". Within a week of the placement of these billboards, the same place sported a new Hutch tristar in pink. Some of the other memorable advertisements included ICC World Cup 2007, "Main to Chala World Cup" contest ads and the pink ticker ads during World Cup 2007 - propagating the non-stop news, highlights and other alerts being provided to the Hutch customers and the educative and informative messages of pink Hutch highlighting the small, medium and large (SML) plans for less, average and most talkative customers.
Vodafone's arrival in India The year 2007 saw Vodafone acquiring a 67 percent stake in Hutchison. What followed was the re-branding of Hutchison Telecom to Vodafone. This was done beautifully with the help of advertisements where the Hutch "pug" found a new kennel (all red in colour). The advertisements communicated the message: Change is Good, "Hutch is now Vodafone". The colour of the brand logo also changed from pink to red. Apart from the kennel advertisement, there were ads showing a wet pug on a red rug; pug peeping out from a red blanket and so on. All the ads created a distinct image of red colour to the viewer thus helping them to start associating Hutch with Vodafone. The "Happy to Help" advertisement was again one of the best aired advertisements on TV in 2008. Vodafone beautifully incorporated the Hutch mascot - The Pug, as its own mascot. The ad used the friendship PAGE 2 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 between a dog and human to creatively communicate - Vodafone is "Happy to Help" its customers. Created by O&M, the new campaign featured Vodafone's trademark character - the young girl and the pug (Lad, 2009). Speaking to Campaign India about the campaign, Rajiv Rao, Executive Creative Director, O&M said, "This time, we started off wanting to refresh Vodafone's customer service promise (Lad, 2009). The promise itself was not new; it has been a brand philosophy since its launch and the first time we stated this overtly was with the Happy to Help campaign during the IPL in 2008" (Lad, 2009). Vodafone came out with a series of ZooZoos advertisements, during IPL-2 season (Indian Premier League - highly popular limited over cricket matches played in India on a league basis), in 2009 (Rediff Business, 2011). The objective was to creatively communicate the different value-added services by Vodafone, like phone back-up, cricket, stock market alerts, fashion tips, and so on. It started off with a series of 30 advertisements which was aired each day during the IPL Season 2. ZooZoos became an instant hit in the market and to date they are the most admired advertisement icons in India. They have scripted one of the most successful stories of brand building in the country. While the Vodafone ZooZoos were principally led by television, it was truly a 360 degree campaign involving digital, outdoor, retail, radio and experiential media (Rao, 2012). The campaign was a huge hit in the Indian market resulting in a spike of VAS. An exclusive line of zoozoo merchandise became a regular feature at Shoppers' Stop outlets. The campaign was also the most viewed viral in the world (Rao, 2012).
The year 2009 also saw the launch of a digital campaign wherein a Facebook App allowed users to guess what antics the zoozoos were up to in the new television commercials (Chaudhuri, 2006). The concept was showing three different ad films in the Facebook App, till a point when the film stopped and the users were prompted to guess what would happen next (Chaudhuri, 2006). The Facebook users then could type in the text field, their version of how the commercial should proceed and end. Vodafone then gave away its zoozoo merchandise (T-shirts) and a BlackBerry Storm each week to the participants (Chaudhuri, 2006). Thus, in this way Vodafone were able to create a buzz amongst the Zoozoo fans on Facebook and was able to give them the first taste of the TV commercials (Chaudhuri, 2006). Role of ZooZoo ads in understanding the transformation of Vodafone from basic voice transfer to 3G services The year 2011, saw the advertisement based on the "Super Hero" ZooZoo, communicating the launch of Vodafone 3G services in India. The advertisements showed ZooZoos as Superman with a Vodafone 3G logo (Rediff Business, 2011). The "super" ZooZoos are able to fly, stop a running train, run at the highest speed, and even stop lightning from hitting the other ZooZoos (Rediff Business, 2011). "Fact or Fiction?", "UFO or Alien?", "Bird or Plane?" "Dream or Reality?" are some of the punchy lines in the new super hero series of ads (Rediff Business, 2011). Each of these advertisements comes with a short storyline and a message. The fascinating aspect is that the ZooZoos talk gibberish, yet send out a clear message (Rediff Business, 2011). The ZooZoos have emerged as the best brand ambassadors for the Vodafone brand so far. They will always be remembered for their simple, smart and swift strategy to success (Rediff Business, 2011), the strategy being living up to the brand's image of great creative and clever marketing. As quoted by Anuradha Aggarwal, Vice President - Marketing, Vodafone: The launch of ZooZoos during world cup will play an important role. We put the zoozoos out whenever we think we have a strong message to communicate and this time we are reaching to the consumer with the 3G. Vodafone 3G is live at many places in India like the services are already up and running in Chennai and Gujarat and we are launching the 3G services in the VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 3 phased manner across the country. Faster, better and smarter is what we want to communicate about our 3G services (Neha, 2011). On the creative execution of all new, faster, smarter and better ZooZoos, Rajiv Rao, National Creative Director, O&M India said:
The brief was a one liner and very simple to launch the 3G service. We wanted to make a big noise about it because it is completely new for the consumer. It is a huge shift of technology from 2G to 3G and it is going to change the experience of consumers at all. So this is much superior technology which needed to be communicated (Neha, 2011). "Right from the beginning, we were extremely clear about the execution. If you compare 3G and 2G, then 3G is definitely better and faster. But as far as the consumers are concerned, this is just another claim unless they experience it. We wanted to communicate it without ridiculing the 2G as that too is much more important for basic users," added Kapil Arora, National Brand Head for Vodafone, Ogilvy & Mather (Neha, 2011). Rajiv further added: We were clearly toying with ZooZoos. We thought that if ZooZoo had represented 2G then 3G should be represented by Super ZooZoos. With the birth of the Super ZooZoo idea, we came up with the superior version of ZooZoo. After cracking that idea, everything became very simple for further execution (Neha, 2011). Story behind creation of ZooZoo The entire concept of ZooZoo ads was conceived by Ogilvy & Mather, and the ads were shot and produced by Nirvana Films in South Africa. The making of ZooZoos advertisements has its own history. The idea was to make real people look like cartoon characters. Thin women and children from the local theatres were chosen to wear appealing costumes (Rediff Business, 2011). They were covered in layers of white fabric (Rediff Business, 2011). Each facial expression was made of rubber and pasted on the actors to cut down on time and cost (Rediff Business, 2011). The sets were made larger than life to make the characters look small (Rediff Business, 2011). While the body was made using a special material stuffed with foam in some places like the stomach, the head was created using a harder material called Perspex (Rediff Business, 2011). The entire shoot cost about Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million) for the 30 different ads (Rediff Business, 2011). It was money well spent and the brand building exercise worked wonders (Rediff Business, 2011). Vodafone's promotional marketing efforts To promote its new bonus card offer which was priced at Rs 4, Vodafone came out with a new advertisement featuring an animated parrot, in 2010 (Chopra, 2010). The ad-film highlights the fact of how nothing is available for four rupees in the present day (Chopra, 2010). However, Vodafone launched a bonus card at Rs 4 targeting the users with lesser usage (Chopra, 2010, SEC B and C). The second half of 2011 (August) saw Vodafone becoming the title sponsor and official mobile partner for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes (VMM) team during the motor racing event held in Noida. The initiative involved two different challenges - "Vodafone Race to Fame - Life in the Fast Lane" and "Vodafone Drive into the Big League" (Campaign India Team, 2011). "Vodafone Race to Fame" offered the four winners - two consumers and two global enterprise customers, a once in a lifetime opportunity, to spend the weekend with the VMM team during the motor racing event scheduled to be held at Noida on the October 28-30, 2011 (Campaign India Team, 2011). The contest involved the Vodafone customers and
"Vodafone Race to Fame" offered the four winners - two consumers and two global enterprise customers, a once in a lifetime opportunity, to spend the weekend with the VMM team during the motor racing event scheduled to be held at Noida on the October 28-30, 2011 (Campaign India Team, 2011). The contest involved the Vodafone customers and global enterprise customers to register themselves on the web site. The selected contestants were then required to compete at Go-Karting tracks where they were tested on their intellectual and physical caliber through various competitive activities (Campaign India Team, 2011). ERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 The second challenge "Vodafone Drive into the Big League" extended an opportunity to small and medium enterprises to have their logo on the McLaren F1 cars that participated in the motor racing event. The SME's were finalized based on the growth they registered in the previous three years. Vodafone also hosted some of the other activities like Hot Laps with the VMM drivers and road shows with VMM car before the grand finale in Delhi (Sports Marketing, 2011). Yet another effort by Vodafone to connect with youth came in September 2011, when it tied up with Facebook to create and launch a new handset Vodafone Blue (Sports Marketing, 2011). The phone has been designed in a manner that it brings an affordable integrated mobile experience to customers. It is an answer to the youth's mobile social networking needs at a pocket friendly price. Very recently (around mid-March 2012) Vodafone has come back with the "BlackBerry Boys" campaign. The new advertisement highlights its reasonably priced plan of BlackBerry's free messaging service, the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) (Campaign India Team, 2012). The BlackBerry advertisement was launched in 2010 and had been extremely successful in branding the BlackBerry handset amongst youth. The advertisement positioned the BlackBerry user, whether he was a college going student or a businessman, to be cool and trendy (Campaign India Team, 2012). The new campaign focuses on the Vodafone's latest affordable price plan for prepaid BBM users. It also showcases the popularity and increased usability of BBM amongst youth. Vodafone has also brought back its beloved character "the pug" in its new advertisements, once again highlighting the instant connectivity of its network - a parameter effectively carried out by the "pug". July 2012 saw the coming back of the "Vodafone Delights" campaign that was launched in October 2011. Running over six weeks, the campaign featured three commercials, in addition to the promotions through radio, print, outdoor, on-ground and digital media. The
addition to the promotions through radio, print, outdoor, on-ground and digital media. The commercials highlighted offers from Vodafone such as free gifts every time you visit the store, birthday gifts, Happy Hours. Anuradha Aggarwal, Senior Vice President - brand and communication insights, Vodafone India, said, "Vodafone Delights is a platform that we use to surprise our customers with little delights and show them that we care." On the timing of this campaign, she explained: We had taken a communication hiatus for a month post IPL before releasing a new campaign and we are following the same timing strategy on the current campaign. We alternate between category consumption driving and brand stickiness enhancement activities. The strategy for the current campaign is the latter one. "The key measure of the effectiveness of the campaign will be hard numbers on the penetration of our three products, namely Thank You card, Birthday Offer and Happy Hours," she added. On the creative execution, Kapil Arora, Country Head - Team Vodafone, Ogilvy & Mather, said: The lead offerings chosen for this round of the Vodafone Delights program are little ways of thanking our customers for being with us. And we chose to bring that to life using the story of a wonderful friendship between a teenage boy and his neighbour. In October 2012, Vodafone came out with an advertisement campaign, inviting its customers and racing enthusiasts to become a part of the VMM Team during the 2012 Formula 1 Airtel Indian Grand Prix. The campaign taking the animation routé to catch the viewers' attention, features the joy ride of two animated caterpillars. Kapil Arora, Country Head - Team Vodafone, Ogilvy & Mather, explained: We wanted to highlight speed and decided to present it in the context of two speed-loving caterpillars who hitch a ride on the VMM car. Animation was then the only way to do justice to VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 5 these protagonists and their ensuing experience. Of course it helps that the treatment breaks stereotypes associated with Formula One advertising and helps the Vodafone offering stand out. Vodafone's approach to communication strategy Vodafone's communication impact As seen in the case, Vodafone's advertisements always created a high-recall value in the minds of consumers. Since the very beginning the company adopts a simplistic approach to educating as well as communicating to consumers the different characteristics and
addition to the promotions through radio, print, outdoor, on-ground and digital media. The commercials highlighted offers from Vodafone such as free gifts every time you visit the store, birthday gifts, Happy Hours. Anuradha Aggarwal, Senior Vice President - brand and communication insights, Vodafone India, said, "Vodafone Delights is a platform that we use to surprise our customers with little delights and show them that we care." On the timing of this campaign, she explained: We had taken a communication hiatus for a month post IPL before releasing a new campaign and we are following the same timing strategy on the current campaign. We alternate between category consumption driving and brand stickiness enhancement activities. The strategy for the current campaign is the latter one. "The key measure of the effectiveness of the campaign will be hard numbers on the penetration of our three products, namely Thank You card, Birthday Offer and Happy Hours," she added. On the creative execution, Kapil Arora, Country Head - Team Vodafone, Ogilvy & Mather, said: The lead offerings chosen for this round of the Vodafone Delights program are little ways of thanking our customers for being with us. And we chose to bring that to life using the story of a wonderful friendship between a teenage boy and his neighbour. In October 2012, Vodafone came out with an advertisement campaign, inviting its customers and racing enthusiasts to become a part of the VMM Team during the 2012 Formula 1 Airtel Indian Grand Prix. The campaign taking the animation routé to catch the viewers' attention, features the joy ride of two animated caterpillars. Kapil Arora, Country Head - Team Vodafone, Ogilvy & Mather, explained: We wanted to highlight speed and decided to present it in the context of two speed-loving caterpillars who hitch a ride on the VMM car. Animation was then the only way to do justice to VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 5 these protagonists and their ensuing experience. Of course it helps that the treatment breaks stereotypes associated with Formula One advertising and helps the Vodafone offering stand out. Vodafone's approach to communication strategy Vodafone's communication impact As seen in the case, Vodafone's advertisements always created a high-recall value in the minds of consumers. Since the very beginning the company adopts a simplistic approach to educating as well as communicating to consumers the different characteristics and
highlights of the product. Even the promotional efforts by Vodafone strongly reflected the brand values defined by the company, namely strong network connection and customer orientation. Vodafone, so far, adopted a proper blend of strong cognitive and affective message strategies in all forms of its marketing communications (Clow and Black, 2011). The cognitive message strategies helped Vodafone to present arguments or pieces of information to consumers. The key message of all its marketing communication activities has been about the product's attributes or benefits. The advertisements so designed have an impact on a person's beliefs and/or knowledge structure (Clow and Black, 2011). Affective message strategies in the form of advertisements and other marketing activities have helped Vodafone invoke feelings or emotions and match them with the good, service, or the company. Advertisements with this message strategy have enhanced the likability of the product, recall of the appeal, or comprehension of the advertisement (Clow and Black, 2011). The latest Facebook advertisements of Vodafone reflect a strong sense of brand ownership amongst customers very much a part of the resonance advertising. The advertisement depicts the importance and necessity of friends to remain connected 24 x 7, via the largest social networking web site, "Facebook". Thus, targeting its existing customers by highlighting the importance of friends in one's life and the necessity to remain connected with them. Vodafone's dilemma The marketing communication of Vodafone Essar Ltd, so far, has created very strong brand value amongst consumers that of strong customer orientation. Majority of its advertisements focus on this aspect of customer service and/or customer relationship. The entertainment value provided by Vodafone ads has helped the brand occupy an excellent recall value which in turn has resulted in increase of the market share in India - a region dominated by a number of telecom players. However, a major area of concern for Marten Pieters is low revenue generation (Pieters, 2011). As quoted in his interview to NDTV Profit: I can't pay my bills from customer numbers. I need t pay bills from the money coming in from my customers. So, in the end it's about revenues and I think that is the challenge for the industry in general. In the last two years the industry added more than 400 million customers but actually the total industry revenue only went up by 7% for all the players together. So we have to fight and cut that cake and eat all of it. That makes it a challenging industry because our costs are related to customers' numbers. More customers means more network, more capacity. At the same time the prices are under incredible pressure which means that overall these new customers do not use it so much but also the existing customers pay less and less (Pieters, 2011). Revenue generation in the telecom sector starts when the customers extensively use different services offered by the company. Since its entry in the Indian market, a host of services have been offered by the telecom giant. The reason for increasing the revenue generation lies in the fact that the increasing customer base results in increase in operational costs the costs of setting the infrastructure and running the telecom operations (Pieters, 2011). And unless the cost of maintaining the infrastructure and services of the existing customers are derived from the revenues earned
by the service provider, it would be extremely difficult for Vodafone Essar Ltd to run its business in India (Pieters, 2011). Hence profits can be generated only when the usage rate of customers increases. To improve the usage, therefore, Vodafone requires promoting various services to its existing customers. The highlight of Vodafone's marketing communication has always been the promotion of these services in a manner which remains in the minds of consumers. The last few years has seen the arrival of several high-technology services in the telecom sector. This has created a lot of clutter in the market. The customers are unable to understand the distinctness of the services provided by any one telecom brand. Also, there has been a sense of disconnect between Vodafone's communication of value addition through its services and its importance in the customer's lifestyle. Launching ads and marketing programs in an innovative, creative manner where the customer not only understands the relevance and importance of the particular service but also adopts it in his/her lifestyle is the biggest challenge faced by Vodafone. The road ahead With the advent of 3G services in India, and excitement in the generations X and Y demographic about this new found power on their mobile phones, VAS is an area where Vodafone can develop its IMC around promotion to the Indian consumers. Vodafone, therefore, needs to target the Indian youth, who are the most tech savvy population, with efforts into areas that are least propagated under VAS (PwC Analysis, 2011). As per PwC Analysis, a large chunk of customers (90 percent) have an understanding of VAS usage as entertainment-based services like music, bollywood videos, internet browsing, e-mails. The more useful services like bill payments, ticket booking, banking transactions, online purchase, stock market trading have a much lower awareness. As far as the usage is concerned, only a select few services like SMS and MMS services, ringtones/wallpapers, listening to music, social networking have been able to penetrate the Indian user base. All the advanced services especially the transactional services are less popular. Services like purchasing products, banking, stock market trading has less usage rates (PwC Analysis, 2011). Vodafone can integrate the high-end VAS in its communication, to make the consumers accept and use these services. In other words, the future adoption of these services relates closely to the current awareness levels of consumers. Trends show a growing demand for entertainment services followed by high-potential information based VAS such as news updates and medical services over mobile (PwC Analysis, 2011). Till now Vod one has promoted and dvertised all the popular value-added services marketing communications. However, there seems to be some disconnect between the communication objective(s) and the users' perception. There needs to be more synchronization between the customer profile and the target mediums where these value-added services can be propagated. Promoting its services in the various social mediums where there is dominance of the Indian youths (18-45 year olds) seems to be a better approach for Vodafone India (PwC Analysis, 2011).
Keywords: Marketing communication, Brand attributes, Brand image, Message strategies, Advertising effectiveness, Promotion, Telecommunication services, India The VAS market in the telecom sector is set to increase in the coming years. Therefore, it becomes imperative for mobile operators to concentrate on the value addition their services are going to bring in the consumers' lifestyle. While most of the mobile operators in India at present are concentrating on propagating the entertainment-based services with very less effort on the transactional services, Vodafone can explore this area of VAS (PwC Analysis, 2011). Some of the value-added services that are expected to show an increased adoption by the consumers includes: mCommerce services; weather updates; news updates; video calling; medical advice; profession updates; educational materials; location-based services to name a few (PwC Analysis, 2011). VOL. 2 NO. 8 2012 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 7 References Boneless Research (2012), India Wireless Telecom Market: September 2012, August. Campaign India Team (2011), Vodafone launches "Vodafone race to fame", filed under Marketing, India. Campaign India Team (2012), Vodafone brings back the "Black Berry Boys". Chaudhuri, A. (2006), The Zoozoos are back! filed under Digital, India, November. Chopra, R. (2010), O&M uses a parrot in Vodafone's latest TVC, filed under Advertising, India. Clow, K.E. and Black, D. (2011), Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications, 4th ed., Pearson, Harlow. Lad, M. (2009), Vodafone rolls out latest "Happy to Help" campaign, filed under Advertising, India. Nardini, E. (2009), Taking a "You Turn" at Madison and Vine; Chief Marketer Network, September. Neha, S. (2011), "Vodafone ZooZoos are back; turn faster, smarter & better", Best Media Info, February. Pieters, M. (2011), "5 players enough for India: Vodafone", uploaded by NDTV Profit "Power of One" on YouTube. PwC Analysis (2011), Connect with Consumers - Value Added Services: The Next Wave, March, Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, available at: www.pwc.com/india Rai, C. (2006), Airtel vs Hutch: and the winner is..., Source Business Standard, available at: www.rediff. com/money/2006/jan/04spec.htm Rao, R. (2012), Ad Strat: Vodafone "Zoozoos", Ogilvy & Mather; Media, Marketing, available at: mxmindia.com; www.mxmindia.com/2012/01/ad-strat-vodafone-zoozoos/ Rediff Business (2011), Zoozoos: India's most adorable ad icons, available at: www.rediff.com/business/ .../slide-show-1-zoozoos-india-most-adorable-ad-icons/20110420.htm