If You’re Thinking It Someone Else Is Doing It

I wrote this iota on October 4th.

Because blogs are structured in reverse chronological order, they lend themselves to tracking a campaign through time. Imagine a promotional tour that stops in 16 cities over a 16-week stretch, where contestants show up and participate with the brand in some fashion. A blog can be used to track this tour from city to city, building anticipation for those who plan to particiapte and giving everyone else a window into this experiential activity.

It sure didn’t take long for Budget to act on my suggestion.

In a first, car rental company Budget has launched a blog-based, four-week, 16-city treasure hunt, called Up Your Budget, which offers a total of $160,000 in prizes.
The contest itself will be promoted almost entirely within the blogosphere with sites like Adrants, MarketingVOX and Boing Boing breaking the story and with advertising promotion on 74 weblogs, including Buzzmachine, Metafilter, Gothamist, Jossip and Busblog, through the BlogAds blog advertising network. There will also be some minimal search engine keyword and IM buys. It will be a true test of the weblog medium’s ability to propagate information and main stream media’s capacity to rely on (and credit) bloggers as sources.

Thanks to Adrants for breaking the story.