Are People fighting over your brand mascot!! Zoozoo's success story

The telecom companies have been path breaking when it comes to brand building and marketing strategy.With telecom companies i primarily refer to the more professional ones like VODAFONE,AIRTEL and the latest game changing entrant DOCOMO.

VODAFONE and AIRTEL have been in the Indian Markets for quite sometime now and have been able to opt in for a thematic advertising strategy.

AIRTEL has been wooing the audience with its soulful ads with an everlasting mass connect and VODAFONE had been relying on the cuteness qoutient ala the PUG.The PUG had quite a cult following but then animal activists went after VODAFONE hard :-)

VODAFONE launched a new advertising and marketing campaign with a new mascot.The Oh So Cute Zoozoo.

The timing of the new campaign was spot on.The new series of ads started airing during the last IPL season attracting maximum eyeballs.The story after that is history.In no time Zoozoo's became a brand in itself and enjoy a cult following.VODAFONE has been proactive to social networkize (that's my own addition to vocabulary:-) ) the Zoozoo brand and the FACEBOOK fan page has mindblowing activity.

I keep checking out their FB fan page once in a while and while browsing i was awestruck at the kind of following the Zoozoo's have.

As again, i will let the pictures do the talking:-) This is a conversation thread on one of the updates on the Zoozoo Fan Page on Facebook.The page attracts a lot of activity and it boasts of a mind numbing 319,436 fans.The comments in the picture get a little messy with a barrrage of unparliamentary words but one update clearly speaks what i have been trying to suggest,

Now, it can be easily said that there are lot of jobless or rather say, people with a lot of leisure time participating in commenting and stuff, the truth is that ZOOzoo is a the perfect example of a cult brand mascot.

Do you know of any other brand mascot which has a cult following? What are your thoughts on the Zoozoo phenomenon.