Make It A Veeper

"Whassup, dude? Check out my veeper at BudLight.com!" That's the kind of word-of-mouth advertising Anheuser-Busch is no doubt generating with the "Making Faces" ad campaign it launched last week. An area on its Bud Light site now lets visitors upload digital photos of people and scripts to go with them.

Software from a company called Pulse turns each photo into a character whose facial parts and expressions sync up with the script. The user helps out by showing the software where features such as lips and eyes are located on the photo. The site also lets Joe Sixpack automatically E-mail his buddies a link to his "veeper," short for "virtual personality." Says Pulse director of communications Garth Chouteau, "This technology is doing what animators and modelers took days, if not weeks, to complete, but what the average person now can do in a few minutes."