Jas Business Blog

‘Below the Line’ (BTL) campaigns are always dear to my heart as they show how innovative the brand manager can get. With so many virals, TVC, print media blasts, the idea of a fresh campaign surely makes one notice the brand with a concentrated attention. And compared to an advertisement, a campaign is based largely on a strategy and needs more planning and prediction.

Baci Perugina, an Italian chocolate brand, has been branding itself on love and romance to make its offering get associated with sweet, romantic and tempting (word Baci means ‘kisses’ in Italian). In its integrated campaign, the chocolate brand decided to sell some sentiments, unleashing an unusual love story. Target of the campaign was to capitalize on Baci Perugina’s awareness during Valentine day period. The company spun a story of one shy Giovanni who has fallen in love with his beautiful neighbor Gaia and went to its target audience – youth, via social media and then SMS.

On 4th Feb, a YouTube video came online uploaded by a guy called Giovanni telling viewers that he is in love with his neighbor, Gaia. He explains that he keeps asking her out but she is not interested. Now finally she has presented a yummy, unique offer to Giovanni- she will kiss him, if 50,000 people would ask her to do so. So that is why Giovanni has made the video, loaded it on YouTube and even then he opens a group on Facebook asking for help. Two days later on 6th Feb, the brand Baci Perugina comes into the scene  as an “independent supporter” of Giovanni’s initiative. They create a page on their website  where people can mail their request.

9th Feb – 3rd video is uploaded on YouTube where Gia tells audience that 20,000 mails have arrived and in case 50,000 mails come, she would kiss this guy.

Meanwhile outdoor campaign starts, videos are plated in a busy plazza asking for people to help the guy by SMSing their request.

On 12 Feb – Giovanni uploads a video thanking people for the 20,000 mails and says if 50,000 mails come he can kiss on Valentine Day (and public goes bersek). Finally on 13th Gia uploads a video saying the guy got 50,000 mails so she will kiss the guy the next day.

On 14th Februaru there is a big event in Piazza Duomo (italy) where the campaign details are unvieled. A video is uploaded on website showing the kiss being ‘delivered’. People realise it was an advertising campaign.

Performance/ Results:

The campaign was planned on different media: viral videos, the community engagement through YouTube, Facebook and the Perugina community, an interactive outdoor and a local event. People soon became fond of the story. In 10 days it recorded more than 50,000 mails; 151,841 visitors to the Baci Perugina site; 26,678 contacts on YouTube and 5,400,000 impressions on MSN. Sales went up by 11% in an A-8 market. Giovanni’s story was spontaneously talked about on TG1, the most important national TV news (italy).

Credits:

Advertising Agency: ARMANDO TESTA Turin, ITALY

Media Agency: MAXUS Milan, ITALY

About Company/Brand : Baci Perugina is one of the most important brands of chocolate in Italy, belonging to the Nestlè Group. It is also famous gift on Vday.

If you are an Indian with access to television or internet or have seen any IPL match then I do not need to tell you what the heck is Zoo Zoo. The ad campaign that has suddenly taken over the any god damn media and has become the talk over lunch, coffee, tea, date, time pass talk and even office conversations! So what is this zoozoo and how is it made, are they actual people, dummies, animations or what? If you ask me, that particular query itself has a lot of hand in the advertisement’s success as television commercial and internet viral.

First of all what is this ZooZoo? zoozoo is the new brand endorsor for Vodafone India. In 2008, Vodafone had unveiled the ‘Happy to Help’ series during the first season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). With the launch of the second season, Vodafone has given birth to the Zoozoo: a special character created specifically to convey a value added service (VAS) offering in each of the newly released commercials.

What’s interesting is that there are some 25-29 such commercials planned under this campaign, some of which are already on air. The aim is to release approximately one ad a day, to sustain interest till the end of the IPL.

Success of this campaign has been humongous! It’s fan club at Facebook already has 188,822 fans base!!

What need does zoozoo like campaign caters to, apart from publicity of the brand? Explains Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India, “We’re acquiring customers at a very fast pace, but a large number of them are unaware of the range of services we offer. I mean, ‘phone backup’, which we’re advertising now, was launched two years ago, for instance!”(well this a news to me too!- Jas)

Behind Camera – Making of zoozoo

No, they aren’t animated characters. They are human beings who were made to wear body suits. “The design of the characters is such that one gets fooled into thinking it is animation,” shrugs Rao, which was indeed the very illusion that had to be created. “In a sense, it is ‘live’ animation!” he quips, referring to the fact that it was all shot live. The films shot at 20 frames per second has made the Zoozoo’s movements hurried and comical. See the images below to know how these ads were made from people.

Ogilvy experimented with several characters and finally took its love for the term ‘egghead’ one step too far, creating characters that don the colour white (with black dots for eyes and a mouth), have heads resembling eggs, and disproportionately thin bodies.

The idea is to tell the VAS stories in a world akin to, yet different, from humans. The creatures were then given a characterisation: they are to lead simple lives, speak a language of their own (something that sounds like gibberish), move in a certain way, and even emote like human beings, with big frowns or big grins to do the trick. The execution is almost like emoticons. “We even limited the number of emotions to be used, to keep things easy,” says Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy India.

If one wishes to understand the size of this head, here’s a fact: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. “We kept the hands and legs thin, which is why we cast women – and occasionally children – wearing the costumes,” says Prakash Varma, ad filmmaker, Nirvana Films, who has directed the commercials. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Sets were created to suit the size of the Zoozoos.

The films were shot by Nirvana in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus. Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year. When asked whether Cape Town is fast becoming a tourist spot for Vodafone and Nirvana, Varma laughs, saying, “Oh no! It’s just that we are very comfortable with the team there and know what sort of work to expect from them.”

Website: http://www.whopperfreakout.com/

One of the very novel ways to involve your customer with your brand/ product is to come out with something interesting that most of your intended customers will like to be involved in and then bring yourself in. Many companies do it by way of “Issued in public interest” or “For more information on this (non product) contact us at xyz” which may happen for some awareness or plain virals. Such methods do not call out at the customers showing off their features or benefits, in fact its mainly not about the product at all, it caters to the peripheral persuasion method. Even though you may not be going for the product/service but still you may end up ‘consuming’ it.

This idea bird has pecked Lufthansa (Airlines) also and as a result it has launched RumorTravels, a campaign which highlights the prevailing stereotypes about countries around the world. We all have such stereotypes for the countries, something that we have been hearing or reading since childhood like many of my friends whom I met during my French exchange program thought that many people in India still travel by elephants! (and I affirmed some, telling them that I have a pet elephant which I got as a gift when I turned eighteen, the age when one gets a driving license in India). Then I have heard a lot about the Italian gentlemen pinching the bottoms of damsels, Paris being a city where people are just lost in romance 24X7! These are the things that “You’ll never know if you don’t go.“, as summed by the tagline of the campaign. In several videos, countries such as Sweden, Germany and France are imagined by would be travelers.

To pep up the viewership and following, there’s also a contest which encourages people to submit rumors about a foreign country in the form of a video or a story for chance to win two round trip tickets from the U.S. to anywhere in Europe. I reached a bit too late for the contest, but still the results are coming.