Hippo-inspired telephone ad catches imagination of young and old
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at 12:14 on December 25, 2005, EST.
By BILL GRAVELAND


CALGARY (CP) - Love it or hate it, hippo-mania has taken a firm grip on Western Canada this holiday season, thanks to an advertising campaign featuring a baby hippopotamus and a catchy song from the 1950s.

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas

Only a hippopotamus will do

Don't want a doll, no dinky Tinker Toy,

I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy."

The song, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, was recorded in 1953 by 10-year-old Gayla Peevey, who sang such other questionable classics as Are my Ears on Straight? and Got a Cold in my Node for Christmas.

But in recent weeks, young and old have been heard whistling, humming or singing snippets of it in schools, malls and offices in British Columbia and Alberta, the two provinces where the TV ad has been running. Radio listeners have created a remarkable demand for airplay.

"We could play it every minute of every day and I think a portion of our audience would be OK with that," lamented Chris Scheetz, program director for Edmonton's CISN-FM.

"It's the Christmas version of Achy Breaky Heart. I'm just scared to death that my kids are going to want a hippo now, and I don't know if I can afford one."

Telus, a B.C.-based telecom company that uses a number of cute critters in its TV spots, built the latest campaign around Hazina, a real baby hippo from the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Langley, B.C. The animal is shown lumbering around the screen while the song plays.

Not everyone loves the piece - I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas was named the fourth most annoying Christmas song of all time by the Telegraph newspaper in Macon, Ga. (Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer came first). But it has caused a stampede at toy stores in the two provinces.

"It's never happened before. There have been many animal commercials over the years, but this one seemed to have caught the imagination of the kids," said John Tait, owner of a Discovery Hut store in Calgary.

"The little guys love the song. Parents tell me as soon as the ad hits the TV, the little guys start screaming and yelling and singing, and they love the hippo."

So much that stores haven't been able to keep hippo toys in stock.

"Our suppliers are mostly down east, and when we were calling saying we need 140 hippos, the first question is, 'What are you doing with all these hippos?' It's funny, because down there there's no demand for it," Tait said with a chuckle.

"You go into the Christmas season preparing the best you can, but this one just came out of the blue. I mean hippos - who would have thought it?" The plush hippos were the first to go, but parents have settled for plastic likenesses and even the old game Hungry Hungry Hippo.

Telus paid $10,000 to use Hazina, with the money going to improve her habitat, and has hired a trainer for the fledgling star. Telus spokesman Jim Johannsson says the experience has left Hazina a changed hippo.

"She apparently has really come out of her shell since then and become quite social."

The commercial is an Internet hit too.

"I even have friends in Argentina that have heard about it," said Johannsson.

The timing has been fortuitous for the Calgary Zoo, which took temporary possession of a baby hippo a few days before Christmas. Splash will stay with its grandparents in Calgary while a new hippo habitat is built at the Granby Zoo in Quebec.

"It was very interesting timing, but it certainly wasn't planned on our part," laughed Trish Exton-Parder of the Calgary Zoo.

"We kind of giggled when we saw how many people were going crazy over the ad."

Splash is in quarantine and won't be shown to a hippo-hungry public until early in the new year.

Advertising campaigns that capture people's imagination aren't uncommon, said Debi Andrus at the University of Calgary's school of business. She pointed to the success of a Taster's Choice ad that followed the flirtation and courtship of a couple for years.

"Who would have known that hippos were that close to people's hearts?"


©The Canadian Press, 2005


And here's where you can listen to the MP3 or burn the song, I burned the song already

http://soe.hyperchat.com/.../hippo.htm

Is this Telus patting themselves on the back?

CinisterCee said:

Damn Telus customer service sucks one day I'm gonna switch to Bell