Like other writers on CultureFeast, I'm a movie buff. I'm also a big fan of anything that can make me feel like a kid again and while this is an internet scavenger hunt, I'm totally hooked. It took me about 40 minutes to complete and I realized that I was not just having a bunch of fun, I was being immersed in the site. I was entirely impressed and… I have a chance to win a Nintento Wii, which I've been meaning to win for a while now. I've never seen anything like it on the internet and it's a genius marketing move. I got a hold of Ian MacLurg, the marketing guy at Spout.com, and asked him some questions.
PF- How did this idea come to fruition?
IM- Our entire [marketing] team had a round table to come up with promotional ideas. This one came up and we thought that it was original, fun, and highlighted the things about the site we needed to highlight.
PF- Was it you intention to highlight the usability of the site?
IM- Well, we wanted to cater this contest to new users, and this gave us the opportunity to bring people in to the site in a fun way and show people how certain features of the site work.
PF- What kind of problems did you run into?
IM- The whole project was very Dev heavy and it required a good bit of design. This concept was completely new for us so there were some definite growing pains. As far as marketing goes, the space that is appropriate for this type of contest is so saturated that it required us to think about creative ways to differentiate the scavenger hunt from your general run of the mill contest.
PF- How did you differentiate between "get a laptop for free" campaigns and this campaign?
IM- Well, most of those "get a laptop for free" campaigns aren't trusted by the general market. You might enter into it and not hold your breath. We decided that the best way to market the contest was to stay true to what the site is all about. Our goal is to convey legitimacy through our brand, the contest itself stands up to that challenge. So the person doing the contest knows that he or she isn't being lied to.
PF- Got any tips for Online Marketing people?
IM- The main goal is to retain legitimacy. The product that you are trying to promote should sell itself and the challenge is to get your product out there without sacrificing what your site is all about. If you do concede on your image you'll have a hard time getting people to believe you're telling the truth.
So there you have it, a super fresh, out of the box idea and a little insight as to how it came about.
You can check out the Scavenger Hunt at Spout.com
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