French telecommunications operator Orange celebrated their 20th anniversary Sept 9. In addition to lighting up the streets of Paris, the brand shared the festivities with their followers around the world with a range of content initiatives under the hashtag #Orange20.

Happy birthday orange

— Manon Barbay (@mbarbay) September 9

The most exciting anniversary content from Orange was the rolling out of #futureself, an interactive microsite that lets users see and talk to a digital apparition of their future selves.

(Incredible likeness right?)

The content, created by Publicis Conseil and Jam3, allows users to upload an image of themselves, which is then processed by advanced facial recognition filters and aged exactly 20 years. Users can ask their future selves anything they want and their digital avatars, powered by Google and AT&T speech APIs, will respond.

(Apparently I have 14 kids, and am no good at golf. I am however a dab hand at ‘Ju-fish-su’.)

For Orange, it sends out the subtle message to customers that they’ll still be there for us in 20 years, and also reinforces the brand’s traditional optimism and sense of future. (Remember their old brand tagline: “The future’s bright, the future’s Orange.”)

Celebrating The Moment, And The Future

Orange’s brief for Publicis Conseil and Jam3 was to refresh their public perception as an innovator of mobile telecommunications, as well as appealing to a younger demographic, who see the brand as “historical”.

Cecile Lejeune, Account Director for Publicis Conseil revealed the meaning behind the #Orange20 campaigns in an interview with Digiday:

“Orange is definitely well known for its position in the telecommunications field, but a bit less for the role the brand plays in the innovation field. The brief from the client was to underline that role and try to appeal to the younger demographic, who think of the brand as a ‘historical one'”.

Personalized Interactive Content

The #futureself campaign experienced has proven quite popular, receiving 350,000 visitors in its first week, according to Publicis Conseil. In many respects, the campaign played its cards right from the start; personalized interactive content is both incredibly engaging, and incredibly shareable.

Recent years have given us ‘Take a Plane Down Your Street’ from British Airways, which let users type in their postcode and see a 747 roll down their street courtesy of the Google Street View API, and ‘Mix Off’ from Talk Talk, which broadcast clips and videos of users dancing on TV spots during screenings of the X Factor. There was also Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ campaign during the World Cup in South Africa which emblazoned user tweets on the top of a 90m JoBurg skyscraper.

All of these examples offer users a personalized, interactive experience that both progresses and reinforces the values of the brand. With #futureself still trending well on social media, Orange have every reason to continue celebrating.