Myrsky Virtual Influencer
MIELI Suomen Mielenterveys ry
Issue 62 | March 2022
Agency
Bob the Robot
Creative Team
Creative agency Bob the Robot
Production Team
Production agency Pictures Helsinki
Other Credits
Communications agency Manifesto Consulting Zoan Pro bono influencer collabs Sony Music Finland, Splay Suomi
Date
January 2022
Background
Mental health problems and anxiety have been increasing among young people for the past 20 years.* In addition, the influences of COVID-19 pandemic struck 15-30-year-olds particularly hard. This time will leave its mark on the mental health of an entire generation.
Idea
The subject has not gone unnoticed by the media. However, stats, figures and numbers are easy to disregard in the age of information overload.
To give both a face and a voice to the feelings, anxieties and desires of young Finns, Myrsky came into being.
Myrsky (which means ‘storm’ in English) was a digitally created virtual influencer who reflected their state of mind, making visible on Instagram their experiences and emotions.
What made him interesting was that he developed and evolved from data captured on a weekly basis at his website (myrsky.
mieli.fi) where 15–30-year-olds responded to his questionnaires.
These all dealt with themes that can affect mental health: the scariness of the future, bullying, life in quarantine, the pressures of social media, loneliness, friendships and so on.
The data from the questionnaires was turned into Myrsky’s Instagram posts, in which he spoke out loud the real words of troubled young people.
To get as many people as possible to help add breadth and depth to Myrsky, many other influencers became actively involved in talking about him.
Results
The campaign had a potential reach of 15 million Finns (a nation of 5,5 million = the population x 3) and there were over 100 000 reactions on social media.
Our Thoughts
If the metaverse is a virtual network through which people can move as if in the real world, this idea would seem to be the opposite of that: a virtual being made real through data; an amalgam of every young Finn who responded to the questionnaires.
What a paradoxical world it is too, where it takes a make-believe personality to get close to the truth.
However the metaverse does turn out in the end, I guess the boundaries between IRL and won’t be blurred so much as completely invisible.