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Understand how virtual assistants have potentialized brands and made them viral

    Which are the technologies, functions, and successful elements when creating a digital representation of a brand!

    Since its arrival, brands have always had mascot in the logos, videos, or illustrations which transmit a message to their audience. Currently, with the massive use of the internet, in addition to the social isolation period, brands felt the need to be there for their audience and also be more interactive to restore this relationship.

    In the last few years, artificial intelligence technology has evolved and potencialized the attachment with these representatives, the so called brand personas or virtual assistants, with the clients. Now, the audience chats directly with the persona as if they were chatting with the brand itself. More than ever, it is necessary to understand how to work with different technologies and formats to communicate with the audience distantly, once decisions are made before the client even goes to a physical store, for example.

    After we have created countless characters for brands, we seek to deepen the evolution of mascots for virtual assistants, technology and its main successful characteristics for the perfect creation of a brand virtual assistant. Check it out!

    Reference images of different digital influencers of brands. In this mozaic, left to right: characters “Olhando”, from Porto Seguro, the human ones like “Clara” from Equatorial Energia and “Elô” from Cielo, “Nat” from Natura and “Eva” from Ticket Alimentação; something near to realism there is “Lu” from Magalu, and conceptual like “Carol” from Totvs, “Joice” from Oi and “Bia” from Bradesco.

    Multiple functions of a virtual assistant

    Virtual characters are divided between 3 main functions. As personal virtual assistants, on devices where it allows you to make direct questions such as what is the best route before leaving home, internet searches or to adjust the agenda. Next, virtual assistants for clients, where they give instructions about your account and your order. And last but not least, business virtual assistants designed for contributors, containing information about holerite, meeting schedules, logistics activity, and more.

    Beyond its initial goal, the chatbot resource is a technology that is used to start an interaction, which has begun to make the customer service quicker with the virtual assistant. The user should speak with a “robot” which is full time available to interact with the speaker, leading to the responsible area or to the website page in need. According to the key words said by the user, the “robot” responds with a pre-programed sentence created by the brand.

    We have seen the creation of virtual assistants in operating systems like Siri (Apple), Cortana (Windows), or corporative like Watson (IBM), that promise to facilitate the user access by means of the technology and voice recognition. More recently, Alexa (Amazon) and the smart speakers, do not need any interaction besides the voice command.

    Therefore, the way that we communicate has evolved. We have learned how to speak with technologies, and we will increasingly develop it to understand more complex questions and calculate more coherent answers even if it is not the answer we were expecting. Help us save time, to perform tasks, and receive insights as to personal subjects as to business. Gradationally, it is more fluid and natural.

    For those who have seen the film Her (2013), the main idea was to transform the machine interaction more humanized in its way to chat with a virtual assistant as a friend, letting it learn your habits along with you, just like a human assistant would do. 

    It does not mean that the character needs a face, or any human appearance. It is possible to create conceptual characters that carry the brand essence using abstract techniques, like we did when cheating Carol for Totvs brand. Click here to know more about this project.

    A successful Digital Influencer

     

    A successful virtual assistant not only depend on technology to communicate with the audience. The transmitted message must be strong to reinforce the brand values to outstand its image.

    The character from Magazine Luiza, Lu (accurately Magalu) is an international reference on how retail makes use of new technologies to create a character that helps virtual attendance full time, at the same time it generates sales. She appeared as a virtual seller but became an expert in technologies. Its need came about when the company's main SAC complaint was that the user did not understand the product's functions well.

    Then a youtube channel was created where the character would show the products in a more organic format, explanatory, and it was a huge success. She not only accomplished the function of being an attendant, transporting the SAC attendance to chatbot (solving simple questions quicker than a real attendant), but also reached an alarming number of subscribers on your youtube channel and became an international digital influencer. With over 1,5 M subscribers, it became the biggest brandchannel. known yet.

    Switching to “traditional brand with a digital channel” to “digital platform with presential spots and human interaction” was the main company goal. Still, the chatbot is uniquely a filter attendance, Magalu speaks a popular language, coherently and efficiently, and also rapidly detects the order number and information. Together with many other different digital services, the Magazine Luiza income enriched more than 1000% just in 4 years (2015-2019).

    Another way to illustrate how the character triggers an audience's empathy is her position on social movements. For example, against domestic violence, accepting gender diversity, or being “present” in important events. The character gradually moves out from chatbots and stents out in human interaction, becoming a more realistic character without the disadvantages of being a real person: she does not die, get older or make decisions misaligned with the company's intentions.

    Above, the character is present in the launching event of Samsung Galaxy 10, pose near the drag queen Aretuza Love in São Paulo LGBTI+ parade and update screen app to engage women to report violence against women. Know more.

    The initial starter for the virtual character creation may arise from the company too. Bia from Bradesco, for instance, came out in 2016 when the company bought the actions of HSBC british bank in Brazil and the executives created a pilot project in which a virtual assistant would assist about 20.000 new employees. Nowadays, Bia assist regular users to pay the bills or to check you bank account status, as well as other services, by voice recognition or via Whatsapp.

    The character Olhando we created for Porto Seguro, was made with the intention of internal communication and it was a success. We did its presence in events through real-time technology, where the character would live react to contributors. Meet him in this link.

    The future of Virtual Assistants

    Different studies have shown that the use of digital services habits, and this character and audience interaction thought technology will sky-rocketing during the next few years, in addition to the massive daily usage of technology and consumer habits. Who know, maybe, even by saving lives.

    Besides the technology, it is important to create charismatic personas, welcoming to the audience and useful in different social media, with an understandable language incorporating different audiences.

    Currently, it is necessary to create your own characters and keep up to trends: the most remarkable subject discussed in a week may suddenly change to a different topic in a matter of days. To move on with this production process, includes different topics about innovative technology and how to use creativity to mix it. But this is a subject to bring about on another page! Stay tuned 😉