This thought occurred after a presentation from Oddcast, a successful shop that capitalizes on creative technology to personalize creative vision, many times through pictures and videos within a campaign.
The presentation featured the famous clip from the movie “Alien” in which the alien bursts out of the crewmember’s chest; however, this time the face of the alien was swapped out with another picture using mymoviemoment.com.
I got so excited that I ran back to my desk and instantly plugged in my daughter’s face to see what it would look like. Needless to say, it freaked me out a little and gave me a good laugh.
I wondered, why do I love this so much? All I am doing is making myself or people I know appear in places in which I have never seen them. Why do I need to see them there?
I started thinking back to the first time I had done this. It was when the Nintendo Wii had first come out. We didn’t have that many group games to play, but didn’t really need them because there was a feature already built into the Wii that helped you create your own avatar, or Mii. I remember inviting our friends over and spending hours designing our Miis. When the XBOX came out with the same feature I jumped on it as well.
Looking back, there has always been a human instinct to leave a mark on the world. Before the virtual/avatar phase, people wrote on walls and bathroom stalls, “so-and-so was here.” Before that, couples carved their names into trees. Even in ancient times people drew images of themselves on cave walls.
With the success of programs like “Second Life,” “World of Warcraft” and Xbox’s highly anticipated Project Natal, it is apparent that the desire to place ourselves and others in different worlds is not going away anytime soon. While I may not have all of the answers to my questions just yet, perhaps the bigger question will be how can marketers capitalize on this very apparent trend to personalize?
