In the past, most of what you heard from Oddcast came from the voices (or text to speech) of our millions of users.  Now that we have a company blog, you will start to hear some of our own voices.  This is my first blog posting and so I thought I would give you some background about how we got into the avatar business.

Oddcast started in 1999, long before anyone had coined the term user generated content.  For a few years, Oddcast was developing and distributing user generated media tools, with products such as VideoMixer, Karaoke, AudioMixer and PhotoMixer.  Our technology was giving consumers the ability to create their own media such as Toyota TV commercials, Coca Cola ringtones, Bjork scrapbooks or Karaoke versions of U2 tracks.

We knew we were on to something, but also knew that we needed to  extend the functionality to keep it fresh.  We decided to let people create and share their own talking characters.

We worked through the night coming up with our first avatar -- a talking George Bush called Dress'm Up Dubya.

Dress'm Up Dubya launched on our home page on a Thursday. The day after, it was selected to be Macromedia (Adobe) Site of the Day. 

When we came into the office on Monday, we learned that Dubya was sent around the world almost 2 Million times.  We had a winner.

By Tuesday, we had our first client. The Government of Canada Department of Human Resources flew in, pointed at Dubya and said, "We want avatars for our youth sites".

But what was it about that product that made it so popular? 

Looking back, I think there were a couple of key components:

1. By using Bush, we fed off of the strong opinions people had for the character.  This is why our workshops work very well with recognizable personalities and where brands can feed off the visibility of their assets.  The political landscape is always a hot issue and George W. Bush garnered very intense reactions.   Bush. Monkeys. Pirates.  I think the trend is clear.  :)
2. People love e-mailing links to others and there's a screening process going on there as well.  The sender is selecting the friends they think will be most receptive to the message.   It is harder to target a better audience than that.
3. Like a cardboard carnival cutout where you stick your head in a scene to take a picture, people like to insert themselves into a production.  Voice is a powerful way of doing that and everyone loves to be heard!

So that is the story of our origin and I hope that you will come back to hear musings from me and the other Oddcasters on everything from thoughts on user generated media campaigns to our opinions on the advertising and marketing world around us.