• by Kate Kaye , May 9, 2004

Marketers have used animated characters and real-life humans to enliven brands from Green Giant's Jolly Green Giant to Palmolive's Madge for a long time. Now, to give their brands a human touch on the Web, advertisers are pairing Internet marketing strategies such as behavioral targeting and viral marketing with virtual character technologies from companies including Oddcast, Pulse, and soon, United Virtualities.

"We have old brains," asserts Ed Manning, SVP of worldwide sales and services at character-driven technology firm Pulse. "We see a face and rationally we might say, 'That's a bunch of pixels on a page,' but our brain says 'person.'" The company works with Byron Reeves, director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, who writes: "Several studies show that people automatically accept pictorial representations of people as real, even though they understand otherwise when given time to think."

Pulse licenses its Veepers technology to agencies and advertisers like Foote, Cone & Belding and Grolsch, who deploy it to turn any static 2D image--be it a headshot, Mini Cooper, or farm animal--into blinking, talking characters. The technology powers an e-card campaign currently running on the Web site of Sympatico.ca, a Canadian Internet Service Provider and portal that enables users to create and send personalized greetings via email or mobile phone. Text entered by the user is translated into an audio stream and synched with the chosen character's moving lips. In addition, Pulse technology has been applied to Java- or Macromedia Flash-based banner and skyscraper Web ad units, as well as wireless formats.

Carat Interactive plans to launch a campaign the week of May 17 for broadband phone company Vonage, which incorporates Oddcast's VHost animated avatar technology. The stylized human-like characters built on Oddcast's platform "are trying to speak to you," says Judy Gern, vice president-account director, Carat. "They have a life that other units don't have."

The agency performed a test on Yahoo! of Oddcast ads against floating ads and streaming video ads, which resulted in a cost-per-acquisition that was 93 percent less than that of previous campaigns running in similar well-performing placements.

Now, Carat plans to roll out a series of six creative executions, each targeted to a specific audience segment. The campaign, which will serve up varied creative based on user behavior or previous exposure to the ads, will be behaviorally and geographically targeted to users in the Claria ad network. The ads feature user-initiated, lip-synched audio, and are also set to run on Yahoo! and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN. Ads targeted to Spanish speakers will play Spanish-language audio and run on culturally relevant sites. "We'll be serving up characters speaking directly to the behavior happening at that time," adds Gern.

Those who enjoyed Colorforms, Mr. Potato Head, or The Barbie Styling Head as kids might appreciate the Divine Yourself Makeover campaign for Gillette's Venus Divine Razor developed by Digitas. Launched April 13, the interactive viral marketing effort uses Oddcast's Flash-based technology, and allows users to customize hairstyles, eye color, skin tone, and apparel for eight different female models, and pass their completed creations along to friends via email.

"A talking call for action attracts more attention than a silent one," claims Adi Sideman, CEO of Oddcast. A handful of the company's 1,200 clients have begun to use the technology in online ad placements rather than on their Web sites or micro-sites, including Coca-Cola, which has run Oddcast ads on AOL to promote media downloads. The ads can be served by Oddcast or through third-party servers. Like Pulse's ad offering, there are no additional publisher or vendor fees associated with using Oddcast's technology.

United Virtualities--a firm that's known in the online ad business for its Shoshkele floating ad technology --plans to toss its hat in the virtual character ring within the next few weeks, according to UV founder Mookie Tenembaum. The company is putting the finishing touches on its avatar product, dubbed Yachne, which means "gossipmonger" in Yiddish. The user-controlled characters look like Lego people, and are designed for community-building and enterprise purposes. As they roam across Web pages, they might exchange coupons with Yachne avatars representing other users, or wear T-shirts emblazoned with brand logos.

Advertisers, stresses Tenembaum, must "partner with the users, not just hijack them."