Local Honda Insight giveaway fuels 15,000 downloads for local news site

Once the app is downloaded, users can enter the contest.

Instant app downloads; just give away a car. An onscreen form allowed users to text to download the new app.

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Company: Honda

Media: Orange County Register, owned by Freedom Interactive

Key executive: Doug Bennett, president

Challenge: Freedom Interactive wanted to promote the launch of its the Orange County Register's new mobile apps, which have much higher engagement than browsers, and to collect emails. One of its tenets is that every new app would also have a cash sponsor.

Strategy: The advertising representative called on Honda corporate, located in their area, who was also looking for a new way to promote and create an email database.  They created a contest in which  Honda would give away an new Honda Insight to one of the contestants who entered by downloading the new Orange County Register app. The cost of the car was included in the trade portion of the deal, which also included cash. 

The contest was promoted for two months in print, rack cards, online ads an a banner on the app itself. Users could also "text to download" the app.

Results: The campaign resulted in more than 15,000 app downloads, 10,000 entries and 2,000 unique email names captures.

Lessons learned: This lesson is a simple one, car giveaways work magic for driving promotions and acquiring a large database quickly. 

This case study was first  presented at the Borrell Local Mobile Advertising conference.  Thanks to Borrell and Associates for compiling the "Best of the Best" in mobile for the conference, we have been using many of their presentations for case studies here. 

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