Zoozoos: Inspiration or Imitation?
The Zoozoo series of ads is one of the most successful running campaigns for telecom giant Vodafone, which had an equal (if not less) amount of success with their ‘pug’ ads. These eggshell-like cute white funny creatures have become all the rage in India, so much so that Vodafone plans to air 30 different commercials. Just like in television, you can find them everywhere online too, especially on social networking websites like Facebook and YouTube in the form of applications, quizzes, micro sites, etc.
But yesterday, I came across an interesting link which changed my outlook on these Zoozoos completely. I stumbled upon a series of graphics on popular stock imagery website stockxpert by user Huebi (real name: Alexander Hübert from Wuppertal, Germany) which were made available in 2007. The interesting part about these graphics is that they resemble the Zoozoos to quite an extent. In fact, I first thought that these Zoozoos even made it to stock imagery sites... LOL!
Follow the links below to check out each of these graphics:
Graphic #1
Graphic #2
Graphic #3
Graphic #4
Graphic #5
Graphic #6
So the question still remains... are the Zoozoos an inspiration or are they just a cut-copy-paste idea? I leave that for you to decide! 😉
Discussion
“Super Yank!!”
Peter Nadar
General Manager (Digital Strategy), Wavemaker
“these are basic references for 3d modeled mascots, i have used lots of them for concept presentations, these are easy to model and render for basic explanations, hence the rounded ‘eggy’ look… looks like vodafone bought the concept eggmen as is”
francis joe
“How about this, the eyes and nose are the same right ?
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/hello_kitty/hello_kitty_09.jpg
... and Hello Kitty is 35 years old 🙂”
Peter Thomas
@ptrthomas
“You forgot the white color of your Hello Kitty which is similar too. 😁”
Priyank Sharma
Author
“not very surprising at all. Indian media has always been in the habit of plagiarising & copying shamelessly”
Twilight Fairy
@twilightfairy
“What about the Pillsbury man?”
Vinay Cardoza
“How about the ‘Michelin Man’ and the ‘Stay Puff Marshmallow Man’?”
Priyank Sharma
Author
“Hmm.. They look similar, but then again the usual Alien look is also similar to Zoozoos. I think zoozoos is original concept. Zoozoos have a mouth too 😛”
Quiz_Master
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