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The genesis of Zoesis (zo·ee·sis) is, not
surprisingly, found in the academic world. From the think-tank
environment of Carnegie Mellon to the early years of the company's
life, the founders tackled the challenge of building believable agents
(interactive characters) into a viable commercial
proposition. Zoesis began its journey by building a prototype
entertainment web site to measure objectively and subjectively the
impact of the technology's appeal. The site was praised by
Disney, AOL, The New York Times, USA Today, and a myriad
of consumers. In 2001, Zoesis won prestigious awards, such as
Massachusetts Interactive Multimedia Council (MIMC) awards for both
Best Children's Content and Best Technology across all
categories.
Zoesis then tested the technology's power for interactive
advertising, by bringing consumer products to life as appealing,
memorable, interactive creatures. NFO, the market research arm of the
Interpublic Group, measured the advertising impact of a
Zoesis-built website, which, compared to the actual public site
for the product, showed dramatic results on the measures of time (half
of the test consumers spent over an hour playing with the Zoesis
content, an extraordinarily long time to spend with an
advertisement) and product appeal (the Zoesis site tripled
purchase intent a week after the initial impression while the
manufacurer's original Flash-based site left no detectable
impression). Based on these results and on their own
evaluations, McDonald's and Heinz chose to deploy
Zoesis technology on their public web sites (ronald.com and
ezsquirt.com).
From these experiences, and discussions they enabled with dozens of
large entertainment and consumer product companies, Zoesis
identified near-term advances in the feature set that would
further expand the market for the character technology. Zoesis
evaluated the requirements for these next-generation interactive
characters and developed a plan for R&D and subsequent
commercialization. The company submitted this plan to the Advanced
Technology Program of the U.S. Commerce Department, which funds
high-risk research with the potential to have large national economic
impact. Zoesis was selected as one of only 40
winners (out of 472 competitors), being awarded $2M in funding over two
years.
Using proprietary interactive-character technology as well as the new
ATP-funded advances, Zoesis continues to help clients and
partners bring their characters to life in new and powerful ways.
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| Copyright © 2003 Zoesis, Inc. |
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