Zoozoos fail to humour Cannes

Vodafone’s Zoozoos may have conquered many hearts in India, but they have sunk without a trace on the French Riviera.

The engaging characters that featured in a series of 30 commercials, which began running through the Indian Premier League matches, failed to win any medal at the Cannes, the ad world’s biggest annual awards competition.

The campaign, conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather, made it to Cannes just in time for the May 31 cut-off date for entries — a month after it was aired in India. Many say the rushed entry could have been a key reason it missed out on a medal.

 

Interestingly, none from the ad fraternity is blaming the judges for this. Sagar Mahableshwarkar, chief creative director, Rediffussion Y&R, said "Some more time was needed to market the work around the world so as to build up the hype.”

He gave the example of the Gorilla ad campaign by Fallon London, which won the Grand Prix last year. The campaign was in everybody’s consciousness as a favourite for the Grand Prix even before the Cannes event started last year.

"Any campaign takes time to grow on you. For example, even the Zoozoos became popular in India only after four or five campaigns. It’s a great piece of work, but the sensitivities of the judges have to be respected," he said.

Colvyn Harris, chief executive officer, JWT, said he was sad that Zoozoos could not make it, but the “experienced jury would have very good reasons for not giving it an award."

K S Chakravarthy (popularly known as Chax), national creative director at DraftFCB Ulka, said he was disappointed with the omission of the Zoozoos but said Cannes was known for throwing up surprises. Chax should know; he was a jury member for the Outdoor Lions category at Cannes this year.

The Integrated and Titanium category for which Zoozoos was listed was in a different league altogether, Chax said. Television is a small part of the campaign and more emphasis is laid on multimedia. “Zoozoos is a nicely done, conventional campaign, but the expectations at Cannes are very different,”  Chax said.

Others agreed. Pointing out that Cannes rewards work that were outstanding on idea and craft, Shiv Sethuraman, chief executive officer, TBWA India, said not getting an award did not take anything away from the Zoozoos campaign, “The campaign is extremely popular with customers because of its endearing nature, but is unlikely to ever be a jury favourite

The disappointment over Zoozoos apart, India had something else to cheer about today. Indian ad agencies medal tally at Cannes has gone up to 24 after JWT’s A Day in the Life of Chennai, a Times of India campaign, which had two shortlists in the Films category, won one gold, taking the agency’s tally to two golds and a bronze.