Zo wants to know…

AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?

Microsoft gave us a chance to step into the future with Zo, their innovative A.I. chat bot, which uses artificial intelligence to create a ride-or-die internet friend, confidant and guide.

Working closely with the client, we developed a new look and personality for Zo, built her a completely redesigned website, and created an alternate reality game for multiple chat platforms which generated over 130 million impressions.

Phase 1: game on.

LET'S PLAY!

In order to play the game, people who are friends with Zo unlocked hidden tokens while chatting with her.

Once users found the tokens, they were taken to a custom, HTML5, interactive game within the native chat platform that gave them access to Zo’s “brain.” We created 5 levels of gameplay, each representing a different part of her brain and each with a different design style such as pixel, low poly and 8-bit illustrations, that incorporated collectable tokens and symbols. The overall goal was to provide a fun way for people to interact with Zo and create shareable moments that encourage new users to seek out Zo as a friend. Overall, the campaign generated over 130 million impressions!

Phase 2: makeover.

​ZO 2.0

When Microsoft began concepting their totally revamped AI chat bot, Zo, they enlisted And Company to evolve her look, feel and overall personality — basically, we were tasked with creating everyone’s perfect internet best friend.

We decided we wanted Zo to be somewhere in between human and bot — quirky, relatable, knowledgeable, young and fun. Based on the personality we created, we cast the perfect model to portray Zo, and then shot photos and hours of video at our studio. Using a custom low-poly mosaic grid, we applied a treatment to the photos and videos to give Zo her distinct look, which is both recognizable as a young woman, but still not fully human.

Phase 3: website upgrade.

ZO GETS A NEW HOME

Once we found Zo’s perfect look and feel, we built her a whole new website.

From there, we designed motion spots promoting all of her capabilities — including skype calling, chatting and drawing — and created digital cards that Zo can send to your friends featuring funny animated gifs. Finally, we created a style guide for Zo, which gave Microsoft a full playbook for Zo’s personality, tone, look, color scheme and typography. That way, Zo will always have a consistent look that is both fresh and adaptable for any scenario she may find herself in.