Virtual Elves: Keebler IM Bots

The Ingredients

Murray dove into the project. "I am the mad scientist behind RecipeBuddie," she says. "This is different than a recipe database wrapped in an IM wrapper because of natural language. This is a writer's territory, and the writing of the script is fun beyond your wildest dreams. You have to anticipate all of the ways that people are going to ask questions." Take the statement "I hate onions." Someone might also write "I don't like onions," or "I abhor onions," or "No onions for me."

"Then you have to come up with an interesting variety of ways to communicate with the consumer. If someone says he doesn't like onions, you can respond, 'I understand. No onions for you. Why don't you try one of these recipes?'"

This response has three distinct parts an acknowledgement, a repetition of the customer's need, and a suggestion. And each of the parts can be said in a variety of ways. For example, an agent must recognize that "hello" is the same thing as "how the heck are you?" and "hi" and "wassup?"

In a way, scripting an agent with BuddyScript is like writing a screenplay in which there are two characters, the user and the interactive agent. The developer determines what words and phrases the agent can understand, and how it should respond.

"We made RecipeBuddie respond to things like, 'I'm sad,' to which she responds, 'How would you like some comfort food?' Or, 'I need to make dinner for my kids,' to which she responds by giving you things that are child-friendly. A recipe database can't do that, because there's nothing inherent in the recipe for a chicken pot pie that says kids are going to like it. We put a layer over top of the recipe database that is the human layer." That layer associates non-ingredient words, such as kosher or picnic, with recipes.

It took Emedia eight weeks to program RecipeBuddie under an aggressive development schedule. About two thousand pieces of dialogue were created. "The dream combination for this kind of project is a strong programmer and a strong writer. You've got words and nothing else. You have to create a strong voice," says Murray. Her team had to create a specific voice for RecipeBuddie. They started with a vaguely Emeril Lagasse-like character, then a prissier Betty Crocker type, before settling on Becky, who seemed the best fit for Keebler's demographic—women, ages twenty-five to fifty-four. "She's suburban and she's got a sense of humor," says Murray.

But women in this age range aren't the only RecipeBuddie users. Certain other demographic groups, it seems, cannot resist asking an ostensibly female bot questions that range from rudely personal to outright harassing. "I sat down with existing bots and typed in everything I could think of," says Murray, who also solicited questions from friends. This prepared Becky to understand the inevitable questions—Will you date me? How old are you? and other more personal queries—so she could politely steer users back to cookery.

The Taste Test

After overcoming the technical hurdles, Murray next had to contend with political obstacles, beginning with AOL, whose IM service is the most widely used on the Internet. AOL must give permission before outside bots can be launched on its network, because "they have to flip a switch to let an unlimited number of messages go to one screen name," says Murray. This is referred to as "provisioning the bot." The hitch is that AOL isn't making any money off the ActiveBuddy bots. To address this, AOL requires a media buy with a buddy launch—such as a RecipeBuddie promotion on AOL's AIM Today splash screen. Neither MSN nor Yahoo requires such a purchase.

"AOL has attempted to come up with their own bot-launching software," says Murray. "They obviously want to make all the money—when these bots are launched, ActiveBuddy gets paid." Still, the three major IM services have so far allowed RecipeBuddie to run on their networks.

"We're using several methods to measure the success of RecipeBuddie," says Jeff Johansen, vice president of marketing for Keebler. "They include the number of users who added RecipeBuddie to their buddy list, the number of message exchanges with RecipeBuddie, the number of recipes viewed, and the number of recipes printed. The number of users who add RecipeBuddie to their buddy list is a good indication of intent to use RecipeBuddie more than once. And we're also using a factor of the number of printed recipes to determine future purchase intent and estimated incremental offline sales. We're thrilled to report that our quarterly estimates were exceeded in the span of just a few weeks after the launch of RecipeBuddie."

RecipeBuddie launched in September 2002. Keebler says it hasn't yet crunched the numbers, but in the test that sold Keebler on the idea of RecipeBuddie, 120,000 total impressions resulted in an impressive 6.5 percent clickthrough rate from a link in ActiveBuddy to an online entry form for a contest on the Cheez-It Web site.

And previous ActiveBuddy agents, too, have generated high expectations. After the Austin Powers agent launched on June 26, 2002, it chalked up almost fifty million messages during more than two million visits in a single month. Consumers interacted with the Austin Powers bot for an average of almost eight minutes each, groovy news indeed for the marketers behind the agent. Clickthrough rates to the movie site were as high as 75 percent, clickthrough rates to Austin Powers Doritos promotional links were better than 7 percent, and more than four thousand users registered at the Doritos site within the first four days of the campaign.

"From the clickthrough numbers we're getting, the program is considered successful," says Murray, who says she learned three important things from creating RecipeBuddie. "First, we're only scratching the surface of what can be done. Users have a desire to engage with [bots] and really dig deep into them. Second, a tightly knit team needs to do it. It's a little like writing a novel. You can work with a couple of people, but you can't just open it up to six people as you're writing. Third, there are a huge number of opportunities to let people put in their own content. We're currently working on a project to let consumer affairs departments package their most commonly asked questions with answers."

As for RecipeBuddie, that falafel recipe was just what I'd been looking for, and it was time to end our chat. "Thanks for everything," I told her.

"You're welcome," she replied. "Are there any other recipes I can find for you today?" But before I could answer, she chirped, "Make your everyday occasion special with the distinctive flavor of Toasteds Crackers!"

It's a special day already.

Gordon Bass is based in upstate New York and writes about technology for numerous publications. Contact him at [email protected].