Zoozoo, new & improved

Addendum is a fortnightly column that takes a sometimes hard, sometimes casual, sometimes irreverent, yet never malicious look at some of the new or recent advertisements and comments on them. Write in with either advertisements you wish reviewed or with your comments at addendum.brandline@gmail.com

The pretty young Zoozoo is ecstatic. She is sure she saw this wonderful male Zoozoo flying. That's just the teaser. A male Zoozoo receives what could be called a distress call. He (it?) ducks in to a conveniently located telephone booth. Seconds later, a masked, caped super hero emerges, flies into the sky, neatly fields a thunderbolt and hurls it back at the errant cloud, uses his heat vision to solve some complicated mathematical problem, runs faster that a bullet and generally wows the pretty young Zoozoo. Move over Superman, Super Zoozoo has arrived! Faster, stronger and selling 3G telecom services for Vodafone. Now that's the power of a mascot (if one could call the Zoozoos that) and that's the power of imagination. Nobody understands the Zoozoo langauage. Yet it's not gibberish. One day maybe we will have a full-fledged Zoozoo language that some radical leader can insist that we all speak in. What I'm really saying is that this is a great example of a big idea that is growing bigger by the minute. Talk about differentiation. While every telecom worth its spectrum is finding ways to say that its 3G services are now available, Vodaphone has a readymade vehicle in which to go to town. O&M, take a bow.

Where's the match?

What would you call the perfect match? How about a couple that goes for a long drive in a Honda Accord? The car zips along long, empty roads taking sharp curves in its stride. All the while the young lady sleeps, and the young gent drives on looking on indulgently at his sleeping beauty. The young man stops the car at the edge of a water body and opens the sun roof. The young lady wakes up, thinks they are at home and instinctively asks him for some tea. Some perfect match! Well, this was not the perfect match Dentsu Marcom and Honda were referring to in their new commercial. The TVC I just described talks about performance and comfort in the Honda Accord being the perfect match. Boy, couldn't they have found a different way of putting that thought across? Let me go on record and say I am a great Honda fan. I drive two of them, so this film could be preaching to the converted. Yet, the idea is as tired as the young lady in the TVC and the execution begs to be made differently. A great car deserves a better advertisement.

Apdi Podu!

I've always wondered how scriptwriters or lyricists got away with Punjabi lines in film songs and even ad films. Even they couldn't be stupid enough to assume that everyone sitting all over India understood that robust language. Then it dawned on me one day (OK, that was a flickering tubelight) that it wasn't the meaning of the language that was important in such songs. Who cared what a soniye or a mundiye was? It sounded good when mated to a vibrant track and as long as you weren't seriously trying to educate somebody, it passed muster famously. Having said that, then why not other languages, like, say, Tamil? Well, my wish has come true, albeit not in the exact way I would have liked it to, but, I'm not complaining. There's this zany commercial for TVS Wego where two scooterists ride alongside while the pretty young pillion riders do some weird stunts to show that this scooter has “body balance”. While all the acrobatics are on, what really fired me up was the music in the background that went “apdi podu, ipdi podu” to a really catchy tune. Don't know what that means? Don't worry, mundiye. Remember, as long as it sounds really good, just tap your feet and enjoy the ride. There's even body balance thrown in to make the ride better. Wow, TVS is really stepping to a new tune. I wish they have a sequel.

On to the show!

Most people get into the habit of standing in line for everything, including for tickets at a movie theatre. And that's the insight that has motivated Bookmy show.com and Cell 18 to produce their new TVC. The bride and groom are standing on their marriage reception stage, and even here the eager-beaver groom prefers to rush in front and take pride of place at the top of the line. A breezy TVC that points out the advantage of booking movie tickets online. No queues, and you get to choose the seats of your choice as early as you want to. I hate standing in queues with a vengeance. If I don't have someone to book my tickets, I'd rather not go for a movie. Now, I don't have to miss a movie.

(The writer is a communications consultant.)