"Cricket Alerts" -- Vodafone's Zoozoo campaign

To promote Vodafone's wares in India, Ogilvy dreamt up a small community of incoherent, maniacally laughing, wingless bird things called Zoozoos.

Mostly the Zoozoos do terrible things to each other and laugh. Each piece ends with some trite tie-in back to Vodafone.

The spots debuted during the Indian Premier League cricket tourney. (Appropriately, "Cricket Alerts" is embedded below. See more ads here.)

The magic of the Zoozoos lies in that they look animated but aren't really. They're actually played by real people wearing white. You can find out what kind of Zoozoo you are at the Vodafone microsite. (Uh, diggin' how the response 4 in question 1 automatically assumes you're a guy. But I guess if all Zoozoos have a package like the one to the right of the quiz, it goes without saying.)

Contagious Magazine -- which brought the effort to our view -- observes Vodafone currently has 65.9 million customers in India (24% market share), making it the second-biggest mobile provider behind Aircel (93.9 million users, 33% share).

The Zoozoos mark "a bold departure for Vodafone in India, which for a long time had the dubious honour of having a pug dog as its brand mascot," Contagious quips. "We think the Zoozoos, with their cricket obsession, charm and humour, will enter the cultural currency of the country."

Hrm. Casting light on Contagious' foresight, the Zoozoos Facebook page has already drawn over 33,400 fans.