Chronic Cellars
Industry: Hospitality (Food & Beverage), Retail
Omead Sinai
Sam Field
Thorsten Bux
Alex Branitsky
Daniel Fernandes
Hannah Bartolomea
Basak Akman
Chronic Cellars have a really strong brand identity: they’re unpretentious with a great sense of humor and their customer base is wide and diverse. But wine can be an intimidating category for lots of people, who may not know what grape varieties they like, or what pairs well with different foods.
Recognizing these challenges, they reached out to us with the goal of animating their iconic character, Purple Paradise, who is beloved by the brand’s consumers, into a dynamic, AI-enhanced sommelier to revolutionize the consumer experience in the wine industry.
The objective was to make the world of wine accessible and relatable to all consumers, with a focus on newcomers. By enabling direct, open-minded interactions with a virtual expert, Chronic Cellars wanted to enhance its mission of delivering exceptional wines to a broad audience. They also wanted to make sure that their more knowledgeable customers got all the details they needed when they asked about things like the wine region, the winemaker, and the vintage.
And this project marked another chapter in our successful collaboration with Chronic Cellars. Previously, we had transformed Purple Paradise from a static 2D illustration of a skeleton into an engaging 3D AR game that brought their signature bottle to life through their iconic character. Given our track record, they trusted us again, but this time to go further with innovation by combining advanced AI tools with Augmented Reality.
We needed to create a knowledgeable AI-powered brand representative who could function as a friendly yet professional virtual wine assistant, reflecting the unique personality of Purple Paradise and the distinctive brand identity of Chronic Cellars.
This required creating a highly personalized AI avatar capable of leading meaningful, and enjoyable, conversations with consumers. The avatar needed to be extensively trained on Chronic Cellars’ heritage, wine catalog, and tasting notes, together with the brand ethos and tone of voice, to ensure authenticity and depth in interactions.
A key aspect of this development was to ensure seamless omnichannel integration for a cohesive presence across all customer touchpoints.
We pioneered an AI-powered sommelier in web-based Augmented Reality, tailored to enhance wine consumers’ experiences with personalized guidance and insights.
This laid-back and well-versed virtual brand ambassador directly engages with consumers, offering wine recommendations, tasting notes, and seasonal recipes, along with providing detailed information about Chronic Cellars’ product lines. Most importantly, Purple is fun to talk to, his personality brings light to the brand, which is what customers love and reinforces the connection with the brand.
This was deployed as a web browser experience on the Chronic Cellars website, and was also available as an interactive WebAR experience through the 8th Wall platform. The character was powered by Inworld’s AI character engine for training personality, and the voice cloned from Chronic Cellars’ original character using ElevenLabs.
When customers activated the experience, they didn’t just briefly check things out and move on. Instead, they actively engaged, spending nearly a minute chatting about wine with Purple Paradise. On average, each person interacted with the experience five times in a single visit.
This high level of frequent interaction shows that consumers enjoyed communicating with the AI-powered sommelier, confirming its effectiveness in maintaining user interest. Also, the consistent and enthusiastic participation from customers highlights how effectively AI and AR have been deployed within this project to create an experience that merges personalization with technological sophistication.
By adopting this smart blend of AI and AR, Chronic Cellars is keeping things fresh and engaging. Following this path of utilizing AI avatars can unlock new opportunities for brands across various industries. It can help position them as innovative and forward-thinking, attract younger, tech-savvy generations, and keep them ahead in the market.
A brand character represents more than just a visual identity; it’s the heart and soul of the brand. On the other hand, today’s consumers are seeking a deeper and more personal connection with brands, which can be challenging to achieve at scale.
Recent innovations in AI provide us with the tools to bring these characters to life, enabling direct communication and interaction with consumers. That is exactly how brands can offer the personal touch that today’s consumers crave, while authentically and vividly expressing the true essence of their brand identity.
However, it’s also easy to completely miss the point and deploy customer-facing AI incorrectly, potentially deterring customers instead of engaging them. It’s important to take the time to understand your brand identity, know your target audience, and craft the right narrative design for your character. Conversational AI still needs to have a clear purpose and use case that helps your customer solve a real problem so you don’t risk coming across as a gimmick.
We found that perfect combination of a clear problem to be solved and a larger than life brand identity with Chronic Cellars by creating an AI sommelier in Augmented Reality that truly resonates with their audience.
Our project with Chronic Cellars exemplifies how AI and AR can deepen consumer connections at scale, ensuring the brand’s essence is both felt and interacted with.
Ready to bring your brand identity to life with AI and AR? Get in touch today.
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