Maya isn’t real. She’s just a computer-generated model created specifically to be a virtual influencer.
Shortly after her generation, this pixelated marketing device – designed to attract ‘follows’ and ‘likes’ – was revealed as a Puma influencer.
She/it sits at the heart of the sportswear brand’s South East Asian region social campaign promoting the Future Rider sneakers.
On the Rider campaign Maya teamed up with three other new (real) regional ambassadors: @toshrock (from Singapore), @adipatidolk (from Indonesia) and @ismailizzani_) from Malaysia.
First teased on Instagram on Valentine’s Day 2020 Maya gave her followers with a sneak peek of the Rider sneakers and also documented behind-the-scenes of the campaign photoshoot, showing off selfies with fellow ambassadors and the PUMA crew through March.
“As an agency, we’ve always been interested in the idea of creating a virtual influencer. When the prospect of an influencer-based campaign presented itself with PUMA, we jumped at the opportunity,” said Amit Sutha, the chief executive officer of UM Studios & Ensemble Worldwide.
“Research told us that it was impossible for any single influencer to cut across the entire Southeast Asian (SEA) region, so the team decided to “give birth” to one with the help of our multiple partners.”
“Maya is an influencer at heart. She is relatable to consumers because her followers have had a first-hand look at her life from conception. Her story is also carefully constructed to cater towards the Southeast Asian audience, meaning the emotional connection they have with her is on a much deeper level than with other influencers.”
According to Eleanor Wang, Puma SEA marketing manager, Maya is a ‘perfect fit’ for the campaign because the brand intended to showcase the new Rider in a way that was ‘relatable’, ‘fresh’ and ‘fun’.
She also promoted, from 23 March, the brand’s new dedicated online game called ‘Rider Challenge’: which enables players earn points and win weekly prizes – including the grand prize of a year-long supply of PUMA shoes.
Comment:
Innovative? Perhaps?
Manipulative and mischievous? Probably
But a bewildering sign of the confusing, can-this-be-real world in which we live now. A world where few seem to know what is real and what is fake.
According to designer/creators UM Studios, Ensemble Worldwide and Intuitive Ideas, plus Graph Studios and Fly Studios, Maya was created using So.Min: a social media artificial intelligence platform which mapped millions of faces across the region from multiple online sources (including a user-generated process via Instagram).
After several face renderings, multiple 3D visioning and a persona created partly from social listening and AI was all used to create a virtual person who could be deployed across a wide range of mediums.
Puma reports ‘a high level of engagement with Maya’ and it has found it interesting that ‘people are wondering if she is real’, and there have ‘even been a few romantic interests’.
We can only wonder quite how influential Maya will be with 8,522 Instagram followers across a region with a population of 655 million.
Links:
Puma
https://www.instagram.com/puma/
https://www.youtube.com/user/puma
UM Studios
Ensemble Worldwide
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