Vodafone India has resurrected the Hutch pug, and this time round the little dog has been imported all the way from Cape Town. The ad featuring a young girl and her dog has been launched to directly promote the customer care aspect of the telecom company. According to Harit Nagpal, CMO,
Vodafone India, this is the first ad in the industry to advertise like so. The reason that the ad has been released now is because there was huge restructuring going on, involving the transition of Hutch to Vodafone, he further explains.
O&M is the advertising agency handling Vodafone’s account in India. The firm has filmed a 60-second commercial, with a storyline made of four sketches in place. Those have then been separated to create four commercials of 30-second duration each.
The ads show the pug sorting out minor emergencies for the girl, like finding a missing sock, or supplying a forgotten tie. Additionally the tiny canine proves to be a helping hand of sorts, bringing her a fishing net when she most needs it, and licking her stamps for her.
he pug has been resurrected after a hiatus of seven months; the last time it was featured was during the Vodafone-Hutch changeover. It has been brought earlier than its usual cycle of a year, and the trend seems to have changed from it promoting the customer care, and not the actual brand as a whole.
“Customer care is the face of our brand, so in a sense, this aspect of Vodafone encompasses the entire brand,” explains Nagpal. “This ad aims to urge customers to come to us. They need to know which services are useful to them, and a helping hand – our customer care – can do that,” he explains, referring to Vodafone tendency to launch new services periodically, and in different subscriber cycles.
The commercial has been directed by Prakash Varma, Nirvana Films. Prakash was behind the scenes in the original ads five years ago too.