The idea

During Univision’s Spanish-language broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024, J Balvin leaked his phone number. Fans could text it through SMS or WhatsApp and get replies from a custom GPT-4-based version of J Balvin in English, Spanish or Spanglish.

The experience was built in five weeks, which is a very sensible amount of time to create a multilingual celebrity who can talk to an entire television audience at once.

My bit

I was VP, Creative Tech & Innovation leading the technical implementation with the team at the community.

Did it work?

49.3 million Instagram views in 24 hours and 1.2 billion impressions. So yeah, people certainly found the number.

Shiny things

The project won Clio Music Silver for Emerging Technology and two New York Festivals Bronzes: Best Use of Celebrity / Influencer and Best Use of Mobile. It was also a New York Festivals finalist in three categories and shortlisted at Cannes Lions in Entertainment. Shortlists are nice. They are still not Lions.

People who made it happen

Verizon, the community, Antfood and Community.com.

Elsewhere on the internet

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