• by Tanya Gazdik , November 21, 2007

To help promote the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie premiering in December, 20th Century has launched a worldwide viral campaign which includes an interactive site where users can express their inner chipmunk.

Created by Oddcast and Soap Creative, www.munkyourself.com invites visitors to create chipmunk avatars by selecting hair color, clothing and setting, and then recording a greeting which is transformed into the familiar, high-pitched signature voice of one of the chipmunk crew. The message can be downloaded or sent via email.

Using technology from New York*-based Oddcast, the site allows users to record their own voice via microphone or by phone (U.S. only), or use text-to-speech to create a computer-generated message. The system uses a special voice filter that transforms the user's dialogue into the iconic sound of The Chipmunks. The application was developed with Soap Creative, located in Sydney, Australia.

Viral emails such as this one* have about a 70% open rate, says Adi Sideman, Oddcast CEO. Of those, about 30% are passed on, he says.

"Folks are even using it as a messaging application," says Sideman, who adds that the trick to getting a good result with the voice transformation software is to speak slowly. "It's been extremely popular. Traffic to the site has been nonstop."

The site will be up through the movie's debut on Dec. 14 as well as the DVD release in 2008. It is the first to launch with Oddcast's text-to-speech capabilities in 14 different languages. These include Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, English (US, UK, AU), French (Parisian, Canadian), German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian, European), Spanish (Castilian, Mexican, Argentine, Chilean) and Swedish.

Telescope, Inc. has developed a way to offer free Chipmunk mobile voicetones. Telescope, which delivers participation media and mobile marketing for consumer interaction solutions, powers a viral promotion for "GetMunked" where users have the chance to send one of 20 different chipmunk mobile voicetones to a friend's cell phone. *The article was amended post-publication.