Rombot
Kandia Dulce
Issue 42 | March 2017
Agency
McCann Worldgroup Romania
Creative Team
ECD MRM//McCann Romania Ioana Filip Chief Creative Officer, McCann Worldgroup Romania Catalin Dobre Copywriters Ioana Zamfir Mihai Vasile Mihai Tititig Art Director Miruna Macri
Production Team
Production Company Frames
Date
December 2016
Background
Over the years there had been negative global media coverage about Romanians, which, over time, had affected investment, tourism and even morale.
An unbiased voice was needed to speak up for Romanians and show the world the true colours of the people.
ROM chocolate was a chocolate bar, wrapped in the national flag. It had run advertising in the past celebrating Romanian culture, including one campaign in which, to much outcry, they had wrapped the bar in the American flag.
Idea
ROMBOT was created as a continuation of this strategy of associating the chocolate with national culture.
ROMBOT was a learning machine that learned from Romanians what made the country great and worth visiting.
Romanians were invited to visit https:// rombot.ro and start chatting live with the ROMBOT, who asked hundreds of questions about the Romanian way of life:
What do you eat? What music do you listen to? What sports do you prefer? What is the most beautiful place in the country?
Romanians rallied to teach ROMBOT all about Romania. In early 2017, having accumulated enough information, ROMBOT was ready to fulfil its ambassadorial duties and answer all questions about Romania to curious foreigners. Where's good to visit, what's good to eat as well as explaining local customs and the Romanian way of life.
Results
Close to one million questions were answered on the website in the first two days.
19 million Romanians
Our Thoughts
Catalin Dobre, CCO of McCann Romania, has described ROMBOT as being like raising a child, albeit a child with 19 million ‘parents’. The point being that Romanians can teach it to swear or they can teach it to be friendly and helpful. That makes it a real test of the Romanian national character as well as being a very brave move from a chocolate company. If ROMBOT mimics Microsoft’s Tay experiment, in which the bot had become racist, misogynistic and homophobic within 24 hours, then that will be a pity if not totally unexpected.
What I love about this is that most neural networks are quietly learning about us. This one is learning from us.