Dive Brief:
- Soylent partnered with creative agency Wieden+Kennedy to create “Trish,” an artificial intelligence-driven "spokesperson" that launched across the food brand's digital channels, including a virtual store on soylent.com, according to a joint press release.
- Given Soylent's purported core audience of tech-oriented startups and entrepreneurs, Trish's rollout includes a Bitcoin-based store on the Dark Web called Soy Route that offers snackers early access to rare Soylent products such as mystery-flavored Soylent, a beef-flavored kit, a pin pack, a drink multipack and "golden" Soylent, which comes signed by CEO Rob Rhinehart.
- The partnership with W+K Lodge extends to brand development, marketing strategy and product campaigns alongside Soylent's internal team, with specific initiatives including website and packaging design, media planning and creative direction.
Dive Insight:
Trish stands at the center of Soylent's new brand platform and is an innovative use of an AI-driven bot for marketing. While chatbots and other AI-powered solutions are increasingly being adopted by brands for functions like basic customer service or instruction, making one a spokesperson is innovative and a little risky, at least from a PR standpoint. However, given Soylent's focus on techie startup culture, Trish seems like a good fit, at least more so than the technology would be for a traditional CPG brand.
The AI isn't just a spokesperson either, with Trish now serving as the company's interface for interacting with its customers. Though chatbots are picking up traction with some marketers, and are appealing for their potential to automate some of the more rote aspects of business, research has found that they can frustrate from an end-user perspective.
Chatbots and other AI solutions that interact with consumers should have set guidelines for what goals they can accomplish lest the user becomes disappointed with a limited experience. Soylent’s audience, being tech-oriented, might be more forgiving given a deeper knowledge of the space, but might also have high expectations for Trish as the proprietor of a virtual store on top of serving as an information resource on the company's products.