Verizon's FiOS Offers Chats With Santa
Writing a letter (or sending an email) to Santa seems so quaint in the 21st century. To bring Santa into modern times, Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service is giving people a direct line video chat with the big guy.
Created by agency B-Reel and B-Reel Films, the interactive program sets up an interface that looks like a video chat with Santa, where they can type in their side of a conversation with Santa about what gifts they want for Christmas (and other questions). Depending on the gifts, Santa responds accordingly before being called away for a toy-making emergency.
“We wanted to do something more designed and story-driven than the more direct marketing they had in the past,” Patrick Ehrlund, creative director at B-Reel, tells Marketing Daily.
The goal of the campaign is to capture 25,000 FiOS-eligible addresses during this holiday season. So, users are required to enter their address before connecting to Santa (those who could use FiOS are shown an animation of the connection being made, while those who can’t use the service are just connected). Once the connection is made, users are given the opportunity to tell Santa whether they’ve been naughty or nice, ask for a gift and ask Santa any question they’ve always wanted, but have never had the chance.
“He’s meant to be a simple playful character,” Ehrlund says. “If you ask him for a basketball, he tells this story about how he used to be quite a baller before his body turned into a basketball.”
To accommodate the wide range of requests they seem likely to get, B-Reel created 300 scripts for Santa to use to answer any foreseeable questions. Though the company considered using voice-recognition for the interface, the technology isn’t developed or widespread enough to support it just yet, says Nicole Muniz, executive produce at B-Reel.
“We did some prototyping, but the speech recognition isn’t available [on all formats],” she says. “We wanted this to be as broad as possible.”
The company is promoting the Direct Line to Santa through FiOS’s social media channels and on Facebook and YouTube. The company is also offering a $200 gift card (packaged as a present from Santa) to help spread the world virally.
Recent Marketing Daily Articles
-
Crowne Plaza Measures PGA Tour Sleep Habits May 21, 11:21 p.m.
Just in time for the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial tournament this week, Crowne Plaza Hotels ... -
Dodge Goes Social With 'Defiance' May 21, 4:44 p.m.
Chrysler LLC's Dodge, which has category-exclusive sponsorship of the "Defiance" TV show and online game for ... -
Microsoft Unveils Xbox One May 21, 2:34 p.m.
For a presentation that was obstensibly about a new gaming console, Microsoft’s unveiling of its next-generation ... -
Telematics Ecosystem Booming, But Caution Advised May 21, 2:05 p.m.
The head of marketing for, say, Starbucks, is probably thinking about cars. Specifically, how to go ... -
Sony Touts Ultra High-Definition TVs May 21, 12:19 p.m.
We’ve been through the HDTV era and the 3DTV era -- now get ready for the ... -
Destination XL's Pixelated Privates Cause Controversy May 21, 11:03 a.m.
Specialty retailer Destination XL is Super Sizing itself, and not everyone is comfortable with its frank ... -
Skyy Launches 'Be Part Of The Art' May 21, 5:57 a.m.
To support the debut of its new Skyy Infusions Moscato Grape variety, Skyy Vodka has launched ... -
Miller64 Partners With Former Pro Athletes May 20, 10:30 p.m.
Miller64 is launching "GO64," a summer-long initiative that will include local events, celebrity appearances, giveaways and ... -
Vespa Looks Back: 50 Years Of 50cc's May 20, 4:36 p.m.
Vespa has been tooling about since the ’40s, and sidelining as a movie star since the ... -
Industry Satisfaction Lagging, But Improving May 20, 4:02 p.m.
For the first time in years, the telecom industry is seeing improved customer satisfaction scores. But ...
Be the first to comment on "Verizon's FiOS Offers Chats With Santa "
Leave a Comment