Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Volvo Treasure Hunt

by Rachel on April 27th, 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 comes out in May. As a proven blockbuster franchise, it’s bound to be the target of advertisers looking to borrow equity in exchange for cash. Here’s the first one I’ve seen, from Volvo, setting up a treasure hunt to find $50k somewhere in the seven seas.

Sign up now to be notified when it starts. This is not the first time they have done this; there was a very similar promotion for the last film, where you could pick up a map from a dealer. Given the success of the last time, I’m not surprised they have tried again:

Response to the campaign has been unlike anything Volvo has ever seen before, Gangeri says. Visitors to the treasure hunt website stay an average of 30 minutes per visit. They’re swapping clues, guesses and hints on the blog Volvo set up for “The Hunt,” and more impressively, they’re doing the same on at least a dozen other gaming blogs, some of them started specifically to discuss “The Hunt.” Members of the creative team monitor customer feedback daily and even respond to it from time to time, but they’re not giving away answers– much to the chagrin of one especially dedicated gamer who somehow got Gangeri’s direct phone line and called her on June 27, begging for hints!

In another measure of success, Volvo has tracked more than 8,000 clicks from the treasure hunt site to Volvo’s online “configurator,” which allows users to price various combinations of features on all its models– an indication of interest in making a purchase, Gangeri points out: “Our overall goal is to generate interest in the brand, and it definitely seems to be working.”

Via Mindcandy

Update: Well, it’s launched and I’m obviously getting people here looking for clues. As i say in the comments, a good place to look is at unforum; Autoblog also has a very active post of people discussing the puzzles.

But if you do not wish to wade through those, here’s some starters. I’m not giving the answers here, but you can find them on the other forums. (Here be spoilers) First of all, everything so far is flash based and everything you need is in the puzzle graphics. What you need to do is interact with them to find the locations. Some you need to do things, others you need just to look hard.

Clue 1: Grab that piece of paper and move it; slowly. Soon you’ll see the numbers and you have to work out the order, just think where the N would go when writing the location and that helps you with the order. And there’s only 8 number so trial and error work here as well.

Clue 2: Keep moving around until you find the crabs. Click, click and click again on the crabs. Soon you’ll see the numbers.

Clue 3: up the stairs to the map room; listen to the man closely, he tells you all you need to know. Then find white mountains in the south and scratch and scratch. The numbers will appear. (This puzzle is the worse so far for legibility - the numbers are far too small to comfortably read. I wonder what they are doing in the Uk where accessibility is far more important.)

Clue 4: most annoying. Keep looking at the body; mess with the contrast until you can see as well as some of the numbers are hidden in the black. The order is from mouth to toe. Some numbers are not in normal Latin script, but in another language. There are 6 panels of numbers on the body, on each leg, arm and two on the torso. Use those to decipher some of the signs to get your full set.

And that is as far as I have gone. Any further you need to get a map from a Volvo dealer, which gives you a code to continue. At this point you need to enter all you details to play further.

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POSTED IN: Engaging the Customer, Fun and Games, Integrated and Transmedia Marketing