Mar. 22 – Indian TV is artfully interspersed with every available second cutting to advertisements, and as creative agencies well know, the quickest way to a consumer’s heart is through humor, especially when it’s combined with identifiable characters that mimic the best and worst of human traits.

Welcome then to the highly popular world of the Zoozoos – an entire series of adverts dreamed up by Vodafone’s creative team to market the many different applications of their mobile products. Each application has a specific advert or situational comedy that applies to it.

The Zoozoos were created by Ogilvy and Mathers and have helped Vodafone leap to a 12 percent market share and become India’s leading commercial brand. According to television audience measurement figures, the advertisements have led Vodafone to claim 26 percent of the overall commercial advertising share. Each day features a new advert. Vodafone will release 30 Zoozoo commercials throughout the IPL season.

“The Zoozoos are not animated characters. They are human beings in body suits made of foam so that they stay in shape. We used young women of slight build, mostly ballet and theatre dancers,” says Rajiv Rao, the executive creative director of O&M Mumbai.

The Zoozoos also have one of the largest fan bases on the social-networking site Facebook with two pages, one official and one unofficial, featuring more than 100,000 Zoozoo buffs dedicated to them.

The entire series of Zoozoo adverts can be viewed here.