Looking to capitalize on the enthusiasm around the recently completed Euro 2008 Tournament soccer championship, Nike is kicking out a mobile camera push to promote a new cleat, dubbed the T90 boot, through an interactive mobile and out-of-home marketing campaign in Hong Kong.
The campaign, created by mobile marketing firm Hyperfactory and ad agency McCann Erickson, calls on consumers to find ads and snap photos to reveal the destination of the next ad.
“Nike created a pretty revolutionary boot and they wanted to create an ad campaign that paralleled the innovation of the shoe’s design,” said Howard Hunt, business development and mobile integration manager at Hyperfactory’s Hong Kong office.
Rather than use traditional advertising around the sporting event, such as sponsorships of games, the athletic gear giant decided to launch an interactive mobile treasure hunt.
Nike is running a series of out-of-home ads throughout Hong Kong with secret codes, in locations such as Nike flagship stores and Mass Transit Railway — Hong Kong’s rapid transit system — subway stations. When consumers find one of the 3-D–enabled ads and point a camera phone at it, an image of a Nike soccer shoe and ball appears on the screen and reveals a special code unique to that location. There are only five ads throughout the city that will reveal a video.
Consumers can text in the special codes to find out the location of each of the five video–enabled ads. Texts will also count as sweepstakes entries to win Nike merchandise.
The codes invite users to download a mobile application that lets them view the T90 shoe in 3-D on their mobile screens, through an augmented reality technology that allows the product to be displayed in a dynamic and interactive 360-degree fashion.
“There is football [soccer] mania here, and this promotion was a way to get consumers to really interact with the brand through their excitement [around the sport],” Hunt added.
Marketers and consumers can expect to see more campaigns like this in the future. “People have gotten used to using their mobile phones and downloading content, which is letting brands take [mobile-based] interactivity to a new level,” he said.
