My Dear Slovaks

For a few years now, SLSP (the biggest retail bank and part of ERSTE Group in Slovakia) has been striving to inject optimism into the Slovak public space with all their brand communication. 

The country has been struggling with low morale, as the citizens of Slovakia became more pessimistic about the future of their nation. Post-pandemic life, campaigns of misinformation from Russia, and huge disillusionment from the recent political generations were all taking their toll.

With the political worldview gap widening and the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the Slovak Republic approaching, SLSP needed a campaign and a strong and accepted hero to front it, to try to heal the divide and amplify their message of optimism and also position SLSP as innovators.

When looking for the hero of this year’s Christmas brand campaign, they wanted someone surprising and unexpected. And the legendary comedian Julo Satinsky would really be someone unexpected. He was famous for his ability to cheer people on, convey criticism in a very positive way, and in his book, he even challenged Slovak people to ‘finish what they started’. And this was exactly the message the bank needed to revive for today as it also connected very well with their financial health proposition. 

Julo was a true acting and comedy legend, and a national treasure. The perfect figure to inspire the optimism so desperately needed in Slovakia. But there was one big problem, Julo had passed away 20 years ago. And it was here that the opportunity appeared to connect the optimistic with the innovative: to bring back an unexpected hero to life using AI.

And this is how the bank’s journey to encourage Slovak people to ‘finish what they started’ begun. After thorough research, and with the enthusiastic permission from Julo’s family, we teamed up with Respeecher, the Ukrainian AI company already known from their collaborations with Mondelez and Star Wars. We had one clear aim, to bring Julo’s voice back on air after 20 years. First, the system had to learn speaking the Slovak language and we also had to find a voice actor skilled enough to record the base voice for Respeecher to turn into Julo’s voice. This was the first time this technology had ever been used to recreate Slovakian, and there were doubts over how successful it could be. But the hard work paid off, and we developed an AI voice that in the word’s of Julo’s daughter was ‘a scientific miracle.’

With Julo’s voice ready to address the nation, we created a touching and inspiring television advert to be the cornerstone of SLSP’s Christmas campaign. He spoke directly to Slovakians and encouraged optimism for the future and for people to work alongside each other to better their country. Alongside the TV, radio and podcasts played a huge role, accompanied by special placements like a chapter about ‘finishing things’ from Julo’s book being released as an audiobook and promoted in bookstores. The campaign consisted of several smaller activations like Julo’s voice unlocking paid content on major news sites to unsubscribed users to be able to finish reading the articles they started.