Aamir Khan's Animated Character

Animation and advertising, separated at birth, seem to be pairing up to create an all-consuming on-screen culture. The animated model is fast replacing celebrities on the endorsement circuit. These blown-up characters are now selling everything, from cell phones and fizzy drinks to cough lozenges and air-fresheners.

Companies like Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Reliance Communication, Coca-Cola and Reckitt Benckiser are using animation-based advertising to come through the clutter of celebrity overkill, make cost-effective ads and, in some cases, rejuvenate brands.

Coca-Cola is set to kick off a campaign for its lemon drink Limca starring animated characters, despite having popular model Sushma Reddy as the brands face. Vodafones series of ads using the eggshell ZooZoos pushed the whos who of Bollywood A-listers, including Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Vidya Balan, promoting rival Bharti Airtel out of the spotlight.

ZooZoo became an overnight sensation during the Indian Premier League this summer. All 27 ZooZoo commercials were aired back-to-back on 15 channels recently. The aim was to push the boundaries and create benchmarks of disruptive communication, said Ajit Varghese, MD of Maxus, Vodafones media buying agency.

Virgin Mobile chose animation characters Pebbleheads to popularise its brand late last year. Reckitt Benckiser is using Mrs Raccoon for Air Wick air-fresheners and Mr T for Strepsils throat lozenges. Pebbleheads commercials made their debut with a 50-paisa offer late last year. The Pebble World breaks the shackles which normal creatives could get confined to. It also helps us spin youth-relevant stories, says Virgin Mobile chief marketing officer Prasad Narasimhan.

Coca-Colas 3D animation campaign for Limca, to rollout on August 1 across all media, will see the company entering the full-fledged animation space for the first time. Animation gives us a lot of possibilities real life commercials dont and research tells us animation now appeals to people across ages, says Coca-Cola India general manager, marketing (flavours), Srinivas Murthy.

The beverage maker, which has the likes of Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan as endorsers for various brands, says it is open to experimenting with animated characters in the future, too.

Globally, Coca-Colas latest open happiness campaign also uses some animation. Animation can be more economical than hiring celebrities and it gives freedom to create stuff that cannot be done using real people, Vodafone Essar head (marketing and new business) Harit Nagpal said.

However, industry experts say while animation ads help companies save costs of hiring celebrities, they are expensive to shoot and time-consuming. Animation-based ads can be controlled in a studio and can achieve any effect. But they take longer, can be quite expensive and the brand must get it right. In Limcas case, the idea is to give the consumer a fresh surprise, says Ajay Gahlaut executive creative director at O&M, the agency working on the Limca brand.

For Reckitt Benckiser, the challenge, again, was to create advertising that would stand out. It works because consumers recognise day-to-day situations with a twist which makes it far more enjoyable than a normal testimonial, a company spokeswoman said. Creatives of both brands are handled by Euro RSCG.