AI Santa
Bouygues Telecom
Issue 58 | March 2021
Agency
BETC, BETC Fullsix
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Stephane Xiberras Creative Director Olivier Aumard Art Director Matthieu Vivinis Copywriter Jean-Romain Sparano
Production Team
Project Director Lara-Jane Lelièvre Developer Dimitri Unimon Head of Digital Studio Maxime Huyghe Lead Tech Alexis Galbourdin Consultant Benjamin Vergne TV Producer Sebastien Lintingre Production Company General Pop Director Franck Brett
Other Credits
Agency Managers Bertille Toledano, Mathieu Laugier, Sophie Roberts, Camille Menard Client Brand Managers Tanguy Moillard, Jérémy Rodney, Lucas Joly
Date
December 2020
Background
At the end of a year of economic and environment crisis (to name a few), Bouygues Telecom wanted to introduce some joy and Christmas spirit.
Idea
In 2020, everything else had gone online from shopping, school and meetings so why not Santa? Bouygues Telecom invited parents to message Santa on +33 6 44 63 59 22 via WhatsApp. In response, Santa gave their kids (and mums and dads) a personalised video that combined AI, creativity, data and technology. And a bit of Christmas spirit, of course.
The messages sent to Santa Claus were processed by text-to-speech technology, which were then generated to mp3 thanks to a specially designed synthetic voice. AI created a totally personalised video with an animated lip-sync, all brought to families across France in a WhatsApp bot.
Results
#allôpapanoël was a huge hit with over three million personalised messages generated in 10 days.
Our Thoughts
What’s lovely about this (some may say ironic) is that it uses technology to humanise the brand. Through its ability to turn a Whatsapp message into a personalised video, Bouygues Telecom is communicating that it is a tech company. But a tech company with a heart. Getting three million families to connect with Santa for a fraction of the cost of a John Lewis TV commercial (say) is a clear sign-post towards the future of brand communication.