Return of the Vodafone pug? What is Vodafone thinking!!!

The pug in the Vodafone advertisement became a celebrity around two years back. You had children demanding their parents for a pug. They shouldn’t be blamed because the pug was indeed so cute and adorable. Right from the first ad with that small boy running on a nature’s trail or helping out the girl with her daily chores in the ‘Happy2Help’ campaign, the pug made a place for himself in our hearts. It had a great recall value, first for Hutch and then for Vodafone and that is precisely the reason Vodafone thought of continuing with the pug after buying Hutch.

Vodafone surprised everyone with the Zoozoo campaign for Value-added Services (VAS) launched in a blitz during IPL 2009 in South Africa. There were 30 different types of ads depicting each of the Value-added services. The Zoozoos became an instant hit. They were so adorable and cute just like the pug although not real characters that everyone went ga ga over them. There were articles written on blogs, in newspapers, discussions on Radio and the Zoozoos were all over the place. Vodafone O&M (who made the concept) would have been surprised at the result, of course pleasantly. They were the talk of the town. The Zoozoo recall value has reached such high proportions that it had almost made people forget about the pug. They became synonymous with the IPL.

I thought it was a strategic move by Vodafone. One, they were moving towards post paid customers who are going to increase with time by offering them Value-added services. This would bring them bigger revenues. This seemed a long term strategy, say 10 years long. Second, they moved away from the pug which essentially was a ‘hutch’ pug.

With the Zoozoo identity, Vodafone now stood for the Zoozoos. They were successful in changing the perception of customers from pug to Zoozoo. Doing it in such a short span of time, kudos should be given to the team at O&M for conceptualising such awesome characters.

Unfortunately, much to a disappointment of many a marketing people, the pug is back again with the small girl to ‘help us’. This is totally inexplicable. After such a successful transition, why would you want to go back to the pug? It would have been understandable to go back to them had Zoozoos failed to create an impact and the transition.

Some of the reasons marketers say is that it was a temporary campaign and it was never a strategy to move away from the pug. Zoozoos were specifically for the VAS purposes. It seems O&M team thinks that whatever they do will turn to gold. This seems to be an exception though, atleast as far as I think. Return of the pug will not affect sales but it will affect Vodafone’s long term prospects and what they had set out to achieve.

This action has given a chance for the other service providers to position themselves as VAS providers. Aircel, especially, should make use of this opportunity since they have the widest range of Value-added services. There last attempt at positioning as VAS providers was overshadowed by the Zoozoos. They should go all out now to take the place which rightfully can be claimed by them, simply for the type of VAS they can provide.

Reliance Communications too can do it. They have launched there high speed internet card. This is the right time to go for VAS since with time, the internet penetration in India will increase and with 3G coming over, speeds will increase, prices will drop and more people will use internet on their phone.

Vodafone have themselves to blame. It is a cardinal sin to move from identities. Only time will tell the implications of the return of the pug.