Urban Dash - New York City
A new form of advertising in our days are apps.
There has been several companies who announce their precence by realizing an app of sorts. usually is just information about the store, or sweepstakes sponsor by the company.
Some adds are targeted to a very specific demographic, from light/ interior designers (GE’s “Mood Cam” lets you snap a pic of a room and see what it would look like with different ’ GE’ bulbs).
A few year ago, Nike had a city wide race like promotion in London, where runners would run around looking for infra-red equipped bus shelters and check in using their phones. The more checks in the Nike grid, the bigger the price.
Whit the widespread of GPS chips in most smart-phones today, these apps can become tools for not only promotions, but also social interaction that goes beyond a forum or updates to social sites.
Lat year, MINI Copper had a promotion in Stockholm when player would find a virtual MINI Cooper and if they could keep it for one week, they would win a real MINI. But, other players could take the virtual car if they witting 50 meters of the player holding the virtual car. Sounds like a week long paranoia experiment if you ask me.
The latest crave I have found is “Urban Dash” by New Balance. The set up of this very interesting promotion is a city (New York City) wide game of cat an mouse. Every day, several virtual batons are release around the city; after downloading the NB Urban Dash app, the player will see a map (powered by google) displaying the current location of the batons. When a player is 100 feet from the virtual baton, the app will beep and the player can grab it (cute button that reads ‘Gimme!). After grabbing the baton, the player takes it the NB store and redeems it for a free pair of shoes. The firs baton gets you shoes, the 2nd and 3rd get you a $75 gift certificate. THe player with the most batons checked in at the end of the promotion, wins a 14k Gold baton priced on $20,000.
But is not that easy. If another player is witting 100 feet of the player holding the baton, the option to “snatch” the baton appears, and the baton gets passed to another player. Also, if the phone loses GPS coverage, (subway, phone dies, app is closed) the baton is dropped in its last know GPS positioning and other players can grab it.
I been opening the Urban Dash app daily to see how many people are running, but not really interested in going after it. Yesterday, I opened the Urban Dash app to noticed that a virtual baton was position near my location. I put on my running gear and went our to grab it.
After the (early, 8:30 am) run I came back home and started pounding the question to try to get downtown a redeem the free pair of shoes or not. I have done a search about the game and found out that there are “players” who just troll around the store waiting for other players to bring the baton from far and wide (I have seen batons placed deep in Brooklyn and at the end of Staten Island) and when they are close, they would snatch the baton and run to the store to claim the price, leaving the poor player who actually did travel with the baton with nothing but disappointment.
In the mid afternoon I decided to gamble it. The store is about 150 blocks away from me. Running to it will be difficult. The second options would be to take a cab (about $30) or the bus.
The M5 bus has a good route. it drives down broadway until 135th St and turn into the riverside drive where it goes express until 72nd st joins Broadway again until Central Park south and finally sails down 5th Avenue all the way to the Village. Perfect for me. The store is in 5th Ave and 20th.
I took the bus and kept my phone on. My phone has been acting up lately, from poor reception, poor sound when I talk and very limited battery life, so I was already stressed. The map would showed other players near me, and the closest I would get to the store, the more players would showed up.
When I was near 23rd St, I noticed a player moving in my direction. I though that if he stand next to the bus, when the bus stops for a traffic light, he could take my baton and I will be trap in the bus, so I decided to get off the bus on 23rd street and get ready to chase a virtual thief if my baton gets taken. At 23rd St the bus stopped and the icon of the second player meet with mine. I was ready to run when my app showed me this:
I wan’t sure yet if I could redeem my free pair of shoes. I was still 2 blocks off the store, so I ran. Once in the store the people working there where very cook about it. The asked me for my ID and my shoe size. I asked if I can choose the color, but they told me that ‘promotional shoes’ as they called them came only in one color:
And red was exactly the color I was going to ask for if I could chose a color.
