Ricky Brasil
Forbes Brazil Magazine
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
Ogilvy Brazil
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Claudio Lima Executive Creative Director Fe´lix del Valle Creative Directors Eduardo Doss, Guiga Giacomo Art Director Paulo Engler Copywriter Mariana Albuquerque
Production Team
UXD Fla´via Goulart, Caroline Salles, Alexander Schevtschenko Producer Patricia Silveira Production House Trator Filmes Sound Producer Evil Twin Technology Nexo Team Luiz Carvalho, Diego Figueredo, Ariane Camilla, Juliana Marques Post Production Stratostorm 3D Alan Prado Motion Designer Kaio Cruz Compositor Igor Sacilotto Image Estu´dio Notan CGI Marcos Sampaio
Other Credits
CEO Ogilvy Group Brazil Fernando Musa Planning Daniel De Tomazo Operations Director Daniel Martins Project Director Priscilla Saikai Project Manning Beto Campos Media Paulo Ferreira Account Manager Juliana Fernandes Client Approval Antonio Camarotti
Date
May 2018
Background
Corruption in Brazil is a multi-billion- dollar business. Although it is difficult to assess accurately the total amounts siphoned off, officers with Operation Car Wash (Operac¸ao Lava Jato) estimate it to be around $61 billion a year.
If that sum of money ended up in the hands of a single individual, she would hold the eighth largest fortune in the world, according to Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2018.
Idea
But what would this Brazilian ‘billionaire’ really be like? His bodily features? His opinions, his consumer habits? Which market segment would be operate in? What would he think about graft probe operations?
To promote its 2018 Billionaire’s List and to raise awareness in Brazil of the sheer scale of corruption, and encourage the public to join the fight against corruption, Forbes Brazil partnered with technology companies Nexo and Notan to use artificial intelligence to depict the ‘face’ of Brazilian corruption. Along with the face itself and its features, the machine- learning device took the experiment one step further and pointed out personality traits associated with this person, ironically called Mr. Ricky Brasil.
Some 150 white-collar convicts picked up by Operation Car Wash were interviewed and their depositions fed into the system along with local media reports, statements, interviews and books.
Eventually, the composite felon emerged from all the data provided and cross-checked.
Results
The campaign has only just launched.
Our Thoughts
There have been some fascinating bots in recent times. Eugenia Kuyda recreated her friend Roman Mazurenko after he was run down by a taxi in Moscow in a fascinatingly similar experiment to the fictional ‘Black Mirror’ episode, in which Martha recreates her dead boyfriend Ash. Then there’s Sophia, Hanson Robotics robot, which gets a bad press in the AI community for being rather less than the sum of her parts.
In essence, Ricky is a chatbot. He’s probably not that sophisticated since
his real purpose is simply as a clever PR story to promote Forbes. But he is a great example for marketers to show how they can start using AI themselves and give a face to their chatbots as well as a voice.