New denizens of cyberspace

A Mumbai-based company is perhaps the first in the world to develop animated characters to advertise products online.

To promote its reality show "" 'Champion Chaalbaaz No 1' "" Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India sought the help of Main Fekoo, who wrote blogs about the programme and uploaded promos on social networking sites.

This might not sound unusual, until you are stunned by the fact that Main Fekoo is a cartoon character and does not exist in real life.

Mian Fekoo (literally "" Poet Exaggerate), as the name suggests, is an animated character who is a street poet and loves to play pranks on poor souls. SET selected the character as it gelled with its show, wherein winners were selected on basis of the best practical jokes they played.

The channel aired videos of these jokes and the programme was anchored by Cyrus Broacha and Saajid Khan.

This was the case with Arun Kumar, a video character who promoted Tata Sumo Grande by writing blogs and posting pictures of the recently concluded Auto Expo. The company also did similar viral animation videos created for online audience "" for logistics and courier major, DHL.

Here emerges a new mode of advertising over the web, with companies looking at cashing in on the viral power. These animated characters and videos were created by Mumbai-based Phonethics Mobile Media, perhaps the only company doing this in the world.

Saurabh Gupta, chief executive officer of the company, alleviates the first doubt that comes to mind "" isn't this cheating? "No", he assures, adding the readers of the blogs and viewers of videos are aware that they are conversing with animated characters.

These characters post blogs on social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, while videos are posted on YouTube, Revver, Sharkle and Metacafe among others.

There is a team indulged in ghost writing for these characters and these blogs also generate considerable interest. "For example, the blogs by Mian Fekoo generated over 25,000 page views," claims Gupta.

Phonethics has already created 14 such characters, of which, only two have been licensed to companies (Main Fekoo and Arun Kumar), while it holds the copyrights of these characters. The other characters include Bai Malaai, Farmao Jaan, Bhakt Harvakt, Ghana Chaudhry and Mr Madhuriy among others.

Gupta said that these characters have a good web presence by way of blogs and video sites, but are yet to be licenced out for commercial use. These have their own characteristics also, like Bai Malaai is a maid, while Bhakt Harvakt is a saint.

"Normally a character takes at least six months to gain speed and once a character achieves a certain level of visibility on the web, then we will licence him. However, there are certain checks and balances, like the attributes of a character should match the product he markets. For example, the case of Main Fekoo, who promoted 'Champion Chaalbaaz No 1'," Gupta said.

Phonethics is also creating customised characters for companies. For example, it is making a mermaid (planning to name it as Nymphin), and is also ready to provide these animated images for spreading social welfare messages. Here are the new denizens of cyberspace.