iCU2 Video Chat - 30 Second Spot

Television Spot for Video Chat Pioneer

iCU2 is one of the first video chat online communities, and is still going strong. Basically an open forum of video chats, where you can start chats, create video chat rooms, and generally talk to people on camera.

This venerable orginizaton needed a new TV commercial, and were generally starting to overhaul their very original interface. I also submitted a few website design demos, but nothing ever came of them.

We developed the concept to appeal directly to the market iCU2 was going after, introduce the benefits of the service, and address any obvious fears. So we found the most attractive / believable people we could and shot the whole thing in one of our producer's parent's house. Overall, I think the spot looks fantastic.

Writing the spot, I tried to make sure each line was specifically targeted to introduce a feature or alleviate a fear someone might have about video chatting, each delivered by a target market demographic. I like constructing the argument one step at a time, trying to integrate everything as smoothly as possible into what's going on. 

I also updated their logo (they are still using the one I designed for them :), and animated it in After Effects to give the spot a little added production value. It's a simple thing, but ended up having a lot of surprisingly hard bits. Since I had originally built the thing in Illustrator, I had to re-build it in After Effects, then get that rotating earth thing looking right... which was one of those hard bits. The little highlight that moves across is a standard trick I use, but I think I need to update it a bit.

Hopefully, you watch this spot and think "hey, that video chatting is not a bad idea!"  It is, of course, but hopefully the commercial helps you think that it's not. Movie magic!