Australian agency Accure together with the ad agency George Patterson Y&R were heavily involved with a promotion for Foster’s Australia called VB Boonanza. This promotion was all about a little interactive talking figurine, the Boony Doll, using technology from Veil Interactive to react to pings from the TV network telecasting the cricket games. The Boony Doll would come to life every time the cricket was on and talk to the consumers at home in his typical Aussie Bloke demeanour.
Each Talking Boony contained a 60 sec sound chip that contained over 35 unique phrases and individual code words.
There were two elements to the technology:
- Audio triggers – the figurines would respond to audio triggers transmitted by Nine during the cricket and embedded in TVC’s. Depending on which trigger the figurine heard, it would respond with a particular style of phrase, allowing it interact with what was happening during the cricket. The phrases were grouped; “good shot”, “good ball”, “appeal” and “random silence”. The random silence phrases include comments like “Anyone seen me thongs?” and “I feel like playing totem tennis”.
- Pre-programmed phrases – the figurines were timed to power up and down to conserve battery life. They were also designed to come to life at certain times and say a particular phrase such as “Hey get me a VB, the cricket’s about to start” before each innings. They also announced a daily code word during the telecast that consumers could SMS for the chance to win exclusive merchandise.
The idea of a Talking Boony figurine brought the VB Boonanza campaign to life and allowed the idea to flow through to all the other touch points. The campaign was quite successful and took out a promo lion at Cannes as well as various awards in Australia and USA. [see awards here]