H/L has been named a Gold Honoree in the Automotive category at the 18th Annual Shorty Awards for the “Brock Purdy Chat Bot”, a voice-powered AI fan experience created for the Northern California Toyota Dealers Association starring San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy.

Built with voice cloning technology from ElevenLabs, the chat bot lets 49ers fans speak directly with an AI agent voiced by Purdy himself. H/L sourced and cloned Purdy’s voice during the controlled sound stage filming of the campaign’s hero spot, capturing his natural tone, inflection, and personality. The result was not a scripted chatbot but a dynamic, conversational game show: fans accessed a custom landing page, used their microphones to talk with the AI, and received personalized responses — custom sports nicknames, hometown commentary, and reactions synced to pre-recorded video of Purdy via real-time webhooks.

Toyota Brock Purdy AI game by H/LObjectives

The Goal: Transitioning from Passive Viewers to Active Participants

In the competitive Northern California automotive market, Toyota aimed to deepen its connection with San Francisco 49ers fans by leveraging its partnership with quarterback Brock Purdy. The campaign focused on two primary goals. First, we wanted to build genuine brand affinity by moving away from traditional one-way advertising and creating a direct interaction between the brand, the athlete, and the fans. Second, we aimed to maximize the quality of engagement. In a digital landscape where attention spans are measured in seconds, our goal was to capture sustained interest that reinforced Toyota’s position as a central part of the local sports community. We developed a digital destination where fans could interact with a custom AI voice interface, turning a standard landing page into an immersive game show event that drove meaningful time with the brand and active engagement.

Strategy and Execution

Execution: Bringing the Chat Bot to Life

We developed a bespoke voice-powered experience that combined cutting-edge AI with personal storytelling. While many brands utilize chatbots for utility, we pioneered the use of AI voice cloning for a localized celebrity execution.

The Action Plan:

Fans accessed a custom landing page and used their microphones to engage with the voice of Brock Purdy. This was not a pre-scripted experience. Instead, we built a dynamic AI agent that initiated conversations by asking for the user’s name, location, and athletic background.

Key Features and Technical Execution

  • Real-Time Personalization: The AI processed user input to generate custom sports nicknames and provide commentary on specific local cities.
  • Integrated Visuals: We used webhooks to connect the AI logic to pre-recorded video assets of Brock Purdy. Depending on the user’s responses, the on-screen animations changed to match the mood of the conversation, such as celebrating a correct answer or reacting to a wrong one.
  • Safety and Security: We built strict brand-safety guardrails into the AI agent to ensure the dialogue remained focused on the game show and the Toyota brand.

Challenges Overcome Our team worked to minimize latency between the voice input and the video triggers. By optimizing the connection between the AI agent and the webhooks, we ensured the experience felt live and responsive. This converted a complex technical stack into a seamless user journey that offered fans a chance to win VIP field access while interacting with their favorite quarterback.

Results

Success Metrics: Capturing Undivided Attention

The results provided a new benchmark for regional automotive engagement. By offering a personalized and high-stakes interaction, we successfully moved fans from social scrolling to active brand participation.

The activation generated over 16,000 calls in the first 3 months. While total reach was significant, the most impactful metric was the average call time of over two minutes. Compared to the 15 or 30 seconds of attention typically gained from a TV spot, or 6 seconds from a social ad, our AI bot secured an average of two minutes of active, one-on-one engagement.

We drove traffic through a multi-channel approach, using QR codes on local sports TV and influencer-led social posts to funnel users to the site. This execution represents a unique milestone for the industry. By combining voice-trained celebrity talent with personalized web animations and a local giveaway, Toyota created a high-engagement experience that significantly outperformed traditional digital benchmarks.

The AI tech partner used for the AI voice was so impressed they wrote a case study about our execution: go to ElevenLabs.