Verdict '09

India starts counting the hundreds of millions of votes cast in, with all signs pointing to a hung Parliament.Its a wait n watch as to who will form the next government.

Counting began at 0800 hrs in all 28 states and seven union territories. Votes polled in elections to state Assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim are also being counted simultaneously.A party or combine needs 272 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha to form a government.Counting began at 4,260 halls in 1,080 centres across the country and would be managed by nearly 60,000 personnel. A little over half of the 71.377 crore registered voters cast their ballots through Electronic Voting Machines in the five-phased elections that began on April 16 and ended on May 13.In all, 8,070 candidates, including from 46 national and state parties, contested in the elections to 543 LS seats.Two members are nominated from Anglo-Indian community.

Zoo-Zoo

Oglivy&Mather India has struck again. This time for Vodafone with ZooZoo and the whole thing has taken everyone by surprise. ZooZoo is a character created to communicate Vodafone's Value Added Services during the IPL. A series of total 30 commercials about the various services offered by Vodafone. I know it's old news as some of you . Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that handles Vodafone advertisements, wanted to make real people look as animated as possible and hence employed Bangalore-based Nirvana Films to shoot these ads in Cape Town, South Africa. The name Zoo Zoo was chosen by Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy India who explained that he chose the name to favour something that was "fun, memorable and catchy, and not a clever one that’s difficult to pronounce". Shot by Prakash Varma and produced by Nirvana Films.The zoozoo's were split in two parts - the body and the head. The body was made using a special material stuffed with foam in some places (notably around the stomach) while the head was created using using a harder material called Perspex.

Rajeev Rao, one of the brain behind ZooZoo. He did it before with the Pug and the Little Boy for Hutch, something that caught the imagination of people. He created a series of this Pug and Little Boy commercials. That ugly pug became an instant icon and so did Hutch. The campaign was creative, it was effective. So he understands how to make ugly, odd things look extremely stupid and funny and yet get away with it. ZooZoo does exactly that. ZooZoo is this odd white egghead shaped character that is pure entertainment. It does stupid things, knows how to make fun and make people happy about it. The only clever thing that the creative and the production team did was not making another animated film. But using real characters to act as animated ones.