T-Mobile’s AI Play: Turning Tweets Into Courtside Commentary

A Game-Changing Voice

In a bold fusion of AI and marketing, T-Mobile collaborated with agency partners VML and ElevenLabs to create an NBA Playoffs campaign that brought fans’ tweets to life. Using ElevenLabs’ advanced AI-powered voice cloning, the team recreated the voice of actor Donald Faison, known for his role in “Scrubs” and numerous T-Mobile campaigns. Selected tweets tagged with #TMobileVoices were transformed into audio clips, effectively turning digital fan commentary into a personalized, branded voiceover experience. These “verbal memes” were then pushed across social platforms, serving up delightful micro-moments that amplified fan engagement and seamlessly aligned with T-Mobile’s irreverent brand tone.

From Text to Talk

The core innovation powering this campaign was ElevenLabs’ text-to-speech engine, which can synthesize human-like voices with startling accuracy. The AI voice of Faison was trained to match his distinct cadence, tone, and comedic timing, enabling near-instant production of short-form, fan-submitted audio content. This not only drove digital buzz during high-traffic NBA playoff moments but also demonstrated a scalable, creative use case for branded voice tech. The campaign stood out by blending human creativity with a tech-first workflow—automating the voiceover process while maintaining personality and humor. It offered a preview of how brands might integrate AI-generated voices into real-time cultural conversations.