AUNZ Work of The Week: Skinny Mobile and Colenso BBDO

New Zealand telco Skinny Mobile has created an AI clone of its happiest customer to serve as its digital brand ambassador. Partnering with Colenso BBDO, Skinny recruited long-time customer Liz Wright to develop the AI clone after she won the Skinny for Life competition.

The clone was created using a 360-degree body scan, voice recordings, and video footage, allowing Liz to appear in various advertising formats. The campaign highlights the creative potential of AI in advertising, blending innovation with customer advocacy. And it makes sense for the brand – Liz is being dubbed “the ultimate low-cost advertising machine” and Skinny Mobile is a low-priced telco.

It’s not the first time Colenso has used AI in a fresh way; the Immortal Award-winning ‘Adoptable’ for Pedigree used the technology to create professional-level images of shelter dogs to increase their chance of being adopted. 

This new application of AI for Skinny is ambitious, proudly claiming it’ll cut the brand’s advertising costs as most agencies worry about that very risk, and fellow telco Telstra in Australia avoids AI, instead investing in papercraft, stop-motion puppets, and hand-set domino runs to convey the brand’s ‘humanity’. 

We’ll be very interested to see a case study – will it attract more customers to the telco? – but in the meantime, we can’t wait to see where, and how, Liz shows up next.