Technology Vendor: Personiva
The Personiva platform allows a user's own photos and personal preferences to be inserted into any video or online content. The resulting personalized experience, which can be extended to music videos, films, commercials, sporting events and other content, can be instantly viewed and shared via links across the web, through blogs, email, photo/video sharing sites and more.
Through the use of Personiva technology, visitors to the Levi's U.S. website can view a recent Levi's Brand commercial with their personal photos inserted into the spot. Visitors simply navigate to the commercial by clicking on a link on the company's homepage; there, after uploading one or more pictures, they can replay the commercial with the photos inserted as the characters. Visitors can also add on-screen text to tell their own version of the story.
In addition, users can share their personal TV commercial with friends via email or blog. If three or more friends view the ad, the original user will receive free shipping on any qualifying purchase of $75 or more from Levisstore.com.
Levi's Brand's TV ads, which were produced by Bartle Bogle Hegarty/New York, communicate the style and comfort of Levi's Skinny, Relaxed Straight 559, and 501 Original jeans.
This campaign follows on the heels of Personiva's successful participation in HP's "The Computer is Personal Again" campaign. That online experience, launched in July with GS&P, extended HP's newest series of TV spots featuring notable personalities who describe the personal content stored on their PC.
-- Personiva
The structure of this is about a flash presentation layer that has an easy UI for the end user to upload content to personalize existing video. Now that sounds a bit clinical and boring, but if you have never seen this approach before, the result can be funny, amazing and magical. The crux is in waiting to see the unexpected and being titillated by it. It is honestly fun. But it also a one-trick pony, and emblematic of some of what we do in interactive marketing to create user affinity and viral programs. We find a way for the user to alter a controlled environment, save it and pass it on. All great, but having seen the HP piece built on this same Personiva platform, I feel like I am seeing the same thing. Not really an idea, but a novelty act. A very good and compelling one, but I have to wonder about the legs it has as exposure to the approach and delivery become less novel.
Don’t get me wrong, it is still a fun way to connect with your friends via a brand, but I guess I am looking for a bigger idea. The HP Personiva execution had greater context and support for the campaign idea and theme. For Levi’s it is a cool trick that can be fun to pass on and even receive, but in the end, it is a trick to renew relevance of existing content -- smart from a client/agency standpoint and fun from a user experience -- but is it memorable?
Personiva has built a great tool to enable agencies/clients/consumers to play with content. I would just love to see an idea that can push it to the next level, and really do something different with an idea that can address the structure and utility of what Personiva offers. Solid and expectedly unexpected.
-- Glen Sheehan, creative director, T3
Personiva of San Francisco capitalizes on the popularity of Levi's TV ads with this unique site that allows the user to place their headshots on the bodies of the actors.
Personiva has done this previously, and to better effect, with clients like HP, where the uploaded picture of the user appears to actually speak the lines of the voice-over. With no spoken lines in "News Story," the uploaded heads appear crudely on the bodies of the actors, though they do manage to blink occasionally. Crudeness is likely the camp factor of this campaign though, and the fun of it is emailing your friends with, "Check me out in this Levi's ad as I tackle the thief and save the day."
The wow factor of this site (and of Personiva's technology) is the instant gratification of seeing yourself in an ad, crude as the headshot placement may be. This signifies a new reach for the too-much lauded "viral effect" of consumer-generated content. In this instance, the consumer is allowing the brand to produce the content while allowing his or her image to appear as product endorser. I love my Levi's too, but my brand loyalty stops at sending people to a site to see my head on an actor's body.
-- Dave Wilkie, VP, creative, Kinetic Results and author of advertising blog Where's My Jetpack?