Deadpool - Mr Pool
Branded AI Agent
Brief as received
We are a movie studio, not a toy store or a theme park.
We do not have a massive merchandising business driving our creative decisions, but we need to discover new revenue sources for our IP.
Our Films and TV divisions are home to some of the most iconic properties and characters in the world, but they only make money with they are in market.
Our development cycle for movies and tv shows means monetization is only realized in specific windows.
Make our product more available and top of mind when we are in development cycles.
Research & Insights
Studio research:
Quite keen on the Simpsons as they do make merchandising money off it and would like to “keep more.”
They experimented with AI for a movie - it “wasn’t executed well.”
The crown jewel was Deadpool - We would need to make a case to do something with it.
Consumer research:
Online and voxpops with 34 Deadpool cosplayers at ComicCon NYC.
They wanted to hear more hot takes by the “merc with a mouth” on the internet. Followed a lot of unofficial Deadpool social handles. Followed Ryan Reynolds and many felt “he was Deadpool.”
Re-framed brief
Use technology to make Deadpool highly available to millions of fans while Ryan Reynolds is sleeping, drinking or in-between movies.
Make the solution scalable across all FOX owned characters like Bart, etc.
Sharpened audience definition
People who like and follow “Deadpool” the movie, were comic involved, or Ryan Reynolds involved.
18-34 / 60% male / 50% single
Problem identified
When Fox properties like Deadpool were in development, the characters were not available to fans, so their value is diminished.
How can we make Deadpool (and all Fox characters) more available to fans in an interesting way?
Insight that shed new light
Fox entertainment is built on the world’s best characters.
The top four “messaging networks” are larger than the top four social networks and growing faster.
AI could make FOX characters like Homer, Scrat, etc available outside of production windows so they could be better monetized.
Multiple meetings with Amazon and understanding the architecture of their LEX AI made it clear a “Branded Intelligent Agent” could be created.
Creating a “compelling” artificial Intelligent agent was more like creating a video game or writing a book than creating an ad.
Marketplace & cultural understanding
Chatbots were lame and voice assistants were infantile. The error handling was weak and frustrating. The interaction was boring and unexciting…
but Deadpool was an entertainment phenomenon based on every single insane thing coming out of his mouth.
Chat story bots like “Sensor Tower” had risen to the top of Apple's top free apps chart in the US , surpassing apps like Bitmoji, Instagram, and Snapchat after dominating mobile in Asia.
A new way of thinking about the product or brand
Deadpool was all about breaking the 4th wall - He’s the perfect “meta-character.”
We will design a story based and game-based experience to allow the “Deadpool” NLU / AI to learn while making the world’s best superhero into the world’s best fan experience.
Work the brief inspired
“Mr Pool”
An intelligent agent that can live in the worlds largest networks.
The Mr Pool AI prototype was designed to enable 20th Century Fox to market their own entertainment in their own channel.
The initial, text based, agent launched in character-driven “Single-player” game mode was modeled after “Would You Rather?”
After Mr. Pool learns about the user in “game mode”, it moves to a “Propelled-Story Mode” of episodic content. Small chunks of narrative-based content triggered based on how much time has passed in the real world, not by how often the user tries to engage.
These “Guard rail” modes were super funny and secretly designed for learning to capture and clearly define key vocabulary, syntax & diction for the intelligent agent program.
Results
Mr Pool launched at SXSW to promote Deadpool 2 with street teams and kiosks to keep him locally contained. He was met with huge interest and we had to impose 5 minute session times because of demand.
Mr. Pool delivered scalable marketing behavior through character driven, emotional connections with consumers.
Technical sessions scale was confirmed and we were confident Mr Pool could hosts one-on-one conversations at millions scale.
End result - Killed.
After integrating learnings from SXSW into Mr. Pool’s neural net, and finishing testing in some of the world’s largest networks including FB Messenger and WhatsApp… we received a phone call.
Call Keywords: “Cambridge Analytica” and “Disney”
[Of course Deadpool cannot be killed - he’s just resting]