Effective Ad Copy

Marketing Insights from Vodafone's Zoozoo Ads

Written by Ashwin Satyanarayana for Gaebler Ventures

Advertisements just have one job to do -- communicate about the product service within a short period of time. Here are some amazing marketing insights from Vodafone's ZooZoo series of advertisements that have been a rage in India.

Copywriting is the hallmark of all your campaigns, and every communication your company engages in should be designed such that it brings in leads, customers or sales.

However, most businesses focus on talking about them - about what the business is about or about how big they are and how many countries they operate in. Frankly, customers aren't looking for big fancy companies to buy from, they are looking to buy things they want and from those entities that they trust. Here are some amazing marketing insights from Vodafone's ZooZoo series of advertisements that have been a rage in India:

Tight focus - all roads lead to one destination: Pick up any ZooZoo advertisement and you will see that there is never anything vague about the ads. You will that all roads lead to one destination and that there is never a single clip in the advertisement that doesn't seem to make sense. Every act, every move, every word, every element of the advertisement is all geared up to communicate whatever the advertisement is about in a short period of time. Once again, these ads prove the efficacy and the immense power of clarity in communication.

Short and crisp -- coming to the point: Some of the ads running in the industry are either too short or too long for optimum message delivery. Some ads go with a song and are too long - not being able to keep the customer engaged. Most advertisements try to talk about a lot of things at once and are usually in a hurry to communicate. Vodafone's ZooZoo advertisements are very short, very crisp, quick and effective. In less than two minutes, the message is delivered.

One campaign per feature/benefit: Needless to say, the Indian telecommunication Industry is growing at a scorching pace and it already has some of the lowest tariffs in the world. Also, there are way too many features and benefits Vodafone offers to the Indian cell phone user. One of the best things Vodafone did with the ZooZoo series is that it picked every standard and Value Added Service it could and made separate advertisements to address each of them. Vodafone's one campaign or advertisement per feature/benefit is an incredibly effective idea. Isn't it?

Closing the sale and calling for action: One thing that stands out very clearly in all the ZooZoo ads is that at the end of every advertisement, there is a message displayed which is short but extremely effective in driving the point home and nailing it to the wall. Even though the advertisement must have been enough to communicate, there is always a strong call to action - equivalent of a sales person's closing-the-sale act. It applies a valuable marketing insight that says that you must never assume that a customer "knows" - whether or not customers know, always "say-it-aloud".

Fun and memorable: When you like something, you will remember. In business, if I tend to remember an advertisement because it was funny, deep and touching, or for whatever reason, the advertisement is showing promise; it's fetching returns. Out of all the reasons mentioned above, one of the most effective ways to make an advertisement memorable is to make it funny or add a dash of humour to it. Vodafone's ZooZoo advertisements do just that and hence each of these advertisements can be remembered.

Ash has an undergraduate degree in engineering and an MBA from Ohio University. Today he is a corporate trainer, business coach and a freelance writer.

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