Claudia Cukrov is a Senior Digital Strategist at New York-based creative agency SS+K and has worked in a wide range of fields from fashion and lifestyle trends, through to research, digital creative and strategy.

Beyond the service, retail and light-entertainment space, chatbot technology offers huge potential to elevate your brand promise or campaign agenda in new or surprising ways.

We knew this experience would anger users and we were counting on it.

We built BFF Trump to give politically disengaged Millennials a one-on-one experience with the then presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. There’s not a single element to the experience that looks or feels like “advertising”. Rather, the chatbot was designed to guide the audience through the issues we needed to highlight during the election year.

We landed on a chatbot experience for a number of reasons. Firstly, we knew our target looked to Facebook for political updates, but fake news was rife in the election year, and the engagement-driven newsfeed rarely challenged users on their values or interests. Secondly, our audience were spending more time in messaging apps than anywhere else, A Messenger bot was the perfect compromise, giving users a way to navigate Trump’s views on various topics in a choose-your-own adventure-style conversational format, powered by direct quotes from the candidate.

In such a contentious election, authenticity was key. So we added a “Really?” button beneath each quote which drove users to the related clip, soundbite or article verifying his words.

We powered the bot with hundreds of Trump’s worst quotes, aiming to drive home just how dangerous this candidate was. We knew this experience would anger users and we were counting on it. For those who responded to the bot with anger, we delivered a clear call to action to head out November 8 and vote.

BFF Trump was a test-and-learn in partnership with Betaworks start-up, Dexter. There were no hard performance goals set, but the chatbot ended up delivering over 750,000 messages in the months leading up to the election to over 35,000 users, without a single cent of paid support. The key driver of traffic was press, and still is.

The result was so convincing, we continue to see users engaging the bot to air their grievances or support for Trump’s latest Executive Order, statement or tweet. One user regularly sends prayers, queries and Black Eyed Peas song suggestions to “Mr Trump” on a weekly basis.

Pair Bot With Paid Media, After A Long Test Run

Paid media of any form should be a consideration when setting campaign goals, but depending on the creative innovation or application of the bot in question, earned media can offer huge value in driving discovery and re-usage.

Paid amplification is only as good as the service it’s driving to and bot technology isn’t perfect. There’ll be many pieces you may have missed or not considered in the early QA phase, so paid amplification should only be activated once you’ve taken a bot on a significant test run.

Don’t Just Push Your Message Through A Bot

Be it customer service, storytelling, retail, or simply getting people out of a parking tickets, bots must serve a clear value to their user. They’re not simply a new channel to push brand messaging or coupons, and in no way should they mimic your typical social channel strategy. Social media audiences are quick to block anything that comes across as spam. Instead, think of chatbots as a new product or service that makes your audience’s lives better.

Advertising in Chatbots series:

A Real Conversation with Customers! — Rick Boyce, Internet advertising pioneer with HotWired

What You Can Learn From Your BFF Trump — Claudia Cukrov, SS+K

A Must-Read Guide for U.S. Chatbot Marketers — Yinon Horwitz, for the Interactive Advertising Bureau

How to Do It Right, And Wrong — Sami Viitamaki, Havas Agency

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