More than a little unconventional : Louis Venter : Blog

Volvo Ocean Yacht Race Game = sublime branding

Im sure most people reading arent aware of the Volvo Ocean Yacht Game but it has a current following of 85000 people. Thats a serious amount of people in a single online game that spans the better part of half a year to complete.

I registered last week while on a business trip to our Cape Town office. (yes i know what youre thinking but youre wrong, LOTS of work was done ) The thing thats great is that it only takes a few minutes every hour to check your bearings and see if the wind has changed. It also maps the actual wind across the globe to make it very very realistic. In short its pretty addictive.

There have been some very funny stories about people settiing alarms at 3am to check their course and mentioning marital problems that they never had before. The pull of this game is very intense and yet still isnt as invasive as games usually are if you play for 12 hours a day.

Ive started a mini competition with some guys and girls from the office and there seems to be a decent rivalry developing. I came in second on this leg which was nice but ive really enjoyed the general abuse filtering around the office.

Since I am in marketing i usually wonder the cost benefit to the sponsor, in this case Volvo. Volvo has put up a serious prize for the winner (even if they call it a price…….priceless!). I reckon they could put a fleet of cars up as a prize and still be worth it.

The brand coverage thay are getting is fantastic when you realise that most people with an interest in sailing are probably in the upper percentiles of the world’s wealthy. The uptake of the game doesnt seem like it is going to stop at 80 000 either. Since i joined the race 14 days ago there has been another 15 000 boats in the “water”. I have also found myself genuinely being a brand loyalist to the game and have personally been responsible to encouraging 20 people to register. Im normally very cynical so thats quite an acheivement.

I also found an interesting behaviour that im not sure is very prevalent. When im not busy (not that often) i find myself typing in the cricinfo.com site and browsing through, this has been the case for about 8 years now and i often have it open in a tab when South Africa is playing so that i can get the score and ball-by-ball commentary. Well in the space of a week i dont think ive visited cricinfo once and ive been finding myself typing in the volvo even after i am finished to see how my colleagues are getting on. I wonder if that is a trend to come, games that do not require constant attention yet keep you coming back for more. Engaging with the action instead of reading about it. With the winds mapping real time i can check if im better than the actual yachts in the race.

In a world demanding relevance for advertising buck a successfull online project of this scale reminds us all that done correctly, social strategies, can really work. Dont get me wrong, a good search campaign will allways outperform a good social campaign (IMHO) but there is room for creativity in all departments which is a little less doom and gloom than we have become accustomed to.

The only thing i would possibly do different is host the game on the same site as the info site as the social links generated serve no purpose to the main site. I do realise that im being very picky.

Anyway congrats to Kim who won this leg, its a long way to go, any suggestions for company prizes? And a special mention to Melanie who decided a quick war with pirates of Somalia was more important than the finish line :).