France Telecom’s Orange is a global provider for voice, video, data, and internet telecommunications and professional services. It has more 226 million business and consumer customers. From 1998 to 2006, its slogan was, “The Future’s bright, the Future’s Orange.”
So, on its 20th anniversary, Publicis Conseil has created Orange’s FutureSelf website that lets you create a 20 years older version of you and talk to your older self.
First it uploads a photo of you taken with your webcam, confirms your age, gender and skin tone, then creates an avatar of your future self. To do this, it uses aging simulation, facial recognition, voice recognition and real-time 3D rendering.
Then you can use your computer’s mic to ask your older self questions about almost anything about life in 2034 and get replies. You can ask about inventions and events since 2014, your new job, your children and your wildest dreams. The standardised responses were apparently written by a variety of humorists.
The project was built by Canadian digital production specialist company, Jam3, over four months.
Orange: Futureself Casestudy from Jam3 on Vimeo.
Jam3 partner and creative director, Adrian Belina, explained that the project uses Kinect and facial motion software, called Faceshift, that records actors giving responses. When your face is captured via webcam, a face-tracking library called CLM detects your facial structure, so your eyes, mouth and nose are positioned onto the 3D face-model.
“The technology behind the site reaches a whole other level of difficulty and innovation. “Creatively our biggest challenge was to move beyond the typical “face in the hole” (“Elf Yourself”)-type site where the end result is a flat photo that’s been ‘puppet-ed’ South Park style. To achieve a realistic look, we modeled a true-to-human face, head and shoulders that would work in WebGL, used a facial motion capture software (that is generally only used by video game studios) to record the life like responses, scanned and analysed someone’s face over webcam, and then went on to apply dynamic light and texture.”
Google’s speech API, which works in English and French, is used to let you talk to your future self – on Chrome. In Firefox, the campaign uses AT&T’s speech API.
The idea behind the campaign is that people can take another 20 year journey with Orange. Its aim is to underline the role of Orange as an instigator of forward thinking ideas and to appeal to younger audiences, who think of the brand as old school.
“Orange is definitely well known for its position in the telecommunications field, but a bit less for the role the brand plays in the innovation field,” Publicis Conseil worldwide account director, Cecile Lejeune, noted.
The campaign site received 350,000 visitors in its first week, according to Publicis Conseil.
