How are brands building challenging experiences to embrace consumers’ adventurous side?
Interactive challenges are a fantastic experiential marketing technique, demonstrating how emerging mobile technologies can be combined with social media in order to engage consumers with an unforgettable experience, which they can not resist sharing with friends.
We are now frequently witnessing a new type of ‘scavenger hunt’, holistically engaging consumers in challenging experiences, embracing both the online and offline world. This is fantastically exemplified through a SCVNGR game app, encouraging consumers to ‘Go Places, Do Challenges, and Earn Points’. The app boasts the qualities of helping businesses to attract custom, get reviews and engage and reward consumers with fun activities. When out and about, the app highlights local participating retailers, and upon entry, consumers are able to complete a range of challenges to accumulate points, which are redeemable in store.
This type of experiential activity can be cleverly integrated into your campaign, by strategically planning and selecting the best complimentary marketing mix elements to suit your campaign, as highlighted in our recent blog post ‘The integration challenge: Why do companies struggle to create successful integrated campaigns?’.
In our Celebrating Creativity blogs, we have identified some fantastic scavenger hunt examples from car retailers Dodge and Golf, who have integrated a combination of online gaming and challenges to interact with consumers in a fun and innovative way. Similarly, the new ‘Escape the Map’ challenge from Mercedes has caused quite a stir amongst consumers, challenging them to help the protagonist escape from ‘Street View’ by completing a number of tasks in a 5 minute online game. To add to the excitement, upon the completion of the task, players are are entered into a prize draw to win a brand new Mercedes C63 AMG Coupe, and are also personally thanked by the campaign character, via a very unexpected mobile phone call!
We would love to hear your opinion on Interactive Challenges. Have you ever taken part in this type of experiential activity? What do you feel about the increasing use of mobile technology used by brands to engage consumers? Tweet us your thoughts @Hotcow.