During the IPL season, if there was one thing (or should I say something) that kept many glued to the TV sets were the ZooZoos.
Appearing to be animations, at first, ZooZoos were cute creatures doing funny stuff and subtly promoting Vodafone Essar's mobile services. ZooZoos became a craze amongst many. Popularity grew manifold when it was revealed that ZooZoos were not animated but real actors donning the funny costumes. It was a matter of pride for Indians as ZooZoos, we are told, were Made In India.
Vodafone was also in spotlight as people started talking about the Pug. It was speculated that the loyal follower Pug was ditched.
But did ZooZoos do the trick for Vodafone Essar? Did ZooZoos help the service provider grow faster? Faster than Airtel, the market leader?
ZooZoos did catch the attention but I don't think it led customers to take action. Out of the Attract Interest Desire Action process, Action was missed. No, they are my assumptions. The figures indicate so!
Subscriber figures published at the COAI website suggests that the net addition month-on-month basis has been dropping. No, not the subscriber base, only the net additions. The net addition figures from March 09 until June 09 are 2848096, 2772890, 2538819 and 2368891.
Is this an industry trend? Figures from COAI’s website suggest that Airtel has been able to add more subscribers than Vodafone Essar has been able to.
A caveat here, I am quite sure that the figures uploaded in COAI site need some cleansing and verification.
Coming back to ZooZoos, I think they gave a fresh face to the campaign and drew attention but I don't think they made great sales persons. The campaign has not translated into hard numbers for the group. But I don't think they can be blamed entirely.
As one of my friends put it in her Tweet, ZooZoos were great but the service is bad. Vodafone Essar may want to set their house in order or may be get the basics right.
In the meanwhile, the services of the Pug have been recalled. Whether the little Pug will do big wonders is to be seen.
Disclaimer:
1. I use Airtel and I do not have anything against any other service provider
2. The inspiration to write this post originates from my brain
3. I wish all service providers the very best in the competitive market
4 comments:
Hi Sriganesh,
This is sandhiya. ur classmate from SRDKVV. Came to ur blog from LinkedIn. I love reading blogs and it's nice to know one of my friends has it and he is very good at it. I will read the rest and comment on it later.
Regards..
Thats very true indeed...I somehow got over with vodafone after pathetic service...I always had airtel till I changed my base from Delhi to Mumbai...I got vodafone in corporate scheme and thought to give it a try...but soon realized its hell to be with it...then switched to CDMA Reliance and no back to Airtel...u know what, these brands need to understand that they should first build the real infrastructure to back such massive advt campaigns, else its a fail with no returns.
Mr. SriGanesh, Nice blog....Nice to know you have a blog. Keep blogging Dude.:))
Ganesh,
I think Vodafone has not made this campaign to attract new customers. But to educate the existing customers about their value added service. Please read the quote below.
"Mobile Value added service is the future for generating higher revenues in the Telecom industry. The ZooZoo campaign is just a precursor to the what lies ahead in VAS sector. Today VAS contributes about 10% of the total revenue of an operator. With 3G and LTE, it is all set to take off."
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