By Paul McGhie
Guess who’s back? Back again? Shady’s back, tell a friend… about his new gamification marketing campaign. Okay, not quite so catchy as the original song, at least, not lyrically, but as October 29th, Eminem launched what can only be described as the Willy Wonka-Golden Ticket competition of Hip-Hop.
By downloading an app to your phone, Eminem fans will be able to access a Sat-Nav map screen. They can then drive around town, on the hunt for special Eminem logo’s that appear in the form of pins. Once they spot one and press it, they are taken to a website that gives them the chance to see Eminem at an exclusive show as well as other prizes including Beats by Dre Pill Portable Speakers.
It’s not the first time a marketing campaign has used a treasure hunt to publicise it’s product, and online treasure hunts have been on the rise ever since major marketeers released the power of the web – (Thanks, Blair Witch). The Dark Knight had a similar campaign where it posted co-ordinates in certain cities on the web, with the winner’s getting goody bags and premier tickets. There’s also the well-known Catch-a-Choo campaign by FreshNetworks which used the earth we walk on as a board game.
What makes Eminem’s campaign newsworthy however, is that the campaign was posted to his Facebook page; a page with 77 million likes – that’s roughly 7% of Facebook turning this gamification project into one with a staggering reach. Not to mention his promotional game where gaining an autographed item has been made into a game: (warning explicit content: http://slimspickins.eminem.com/)
The app being used to deliver the competition is Waze; a social-driving-network mapping app that has recently been acquired by Google (so you know it has legs to run on). Waze has begun to make a name for itself as a marketing partner to big brands with Fiat also recently using the app to alert drivers to the nearest rest-stops when in heavy traffic.
Geo-targeting of consumers is on the rise and although a competition like this doesn’t add up to much in terms of useable data on the users regular habits, it does provide an effective platform upon which to place such an app onto an individual’s phone. In the case of Eminem, up to 77 million phones.
Such an effective campaign seems almost…Criminal.
(Just a note here from Betty, I cringed at that last sentence, and you can too, but Paul is particularly proud of it!)