American Express Launches Virtual Ellen DeGeneres
By Justin McHenry
If you enjoy Ellen DeGeneres’ commercials for American Express, you just might enjoy American Express’ latest brainstorm—a virtual DeGeneres that you can customize to create your own video message. Playing off DeGeneres’ latest commercial, built around her professed love of animals, the online “avatar” of DeGeneres is paired with various animals in different situations. As a user, you can type in a message that is translated to audio and intermixed with the DeGeneres character, or you can even call in and have your real voice be a part of the show. When finished, you can e-mail friends to show them your creation or even add the video to a MySpace page.
As an example, in one possible video scenario, DeGeneres is shown with a beaver (?) and talking about karaoke. She then tells the beaver, Craig, to do his favorite number–this is the point at which you can customize the presentation by adding your text or actual voice message, which the animal will then say as part of the overall piece.
We created one and had the animal sing the Bank of America “One” cover, which made us laugh to no end–your idea of comedy may be different.