Apparel brand and retailer Guess is driving up its cool factor on social media with a sponsorship of a rally car team in the Gumball 3000, an international race that spans from Stockholm, Sweden to Las Vegas, NV, enabling the brand to advertise leading up to the event and also live-report from location via Snapchat. 

The brand has been sharing fragments of photos correlated to the event through its Instagram page and various social media outlets, featuring models wearing apparel designed specifically for the event posing with the gumball rally car to grab users' attention and promote the upcoming race. Through Guess?s Snapchat, fans will be able to see up close action of the race along with the Guess Girls who will be located there as well, wearing their Guess Gumball attire. 

"The Guess partnership with Gumbal 3000 naturally lends itself to social media," said Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile, New York.. "The three road rally teams attempts to garner social support and the release of short bits of content are designed to build up hype and generate social buzz. 

"Guess strategically chose models who already have a sizable social media following to participate in the campaign," she said. "Those partnerships provide tentacles through which the campaign can have a broader social reach. 

"When it comes to a competition, live reporting via social media is pretty much mandatory. Mobile and social channels provide fast and effective methods through which to reach consumers. 

The race starts on May 23 in Stockholm and drivers will travel through five different countries ending the race in the United States at Las Vegas on May 30, with various events taking place throughout the race. 

Driving direct
Guess is bringing the race directly to consumers and making them a part of it. The brand is using its Guess Girls to model with the cars and apparel promoting the event. 

Through this, Guess is attempting to cement a brand image that embodies a trendy and popular representation, and is using unique social media posts to make it happen. The fragmented images that the brand has posted show little pieces of a bigger picture featuring one of its popular models in a puzzle-like format, revealing the announcement that it will be partnering in the race. 

To advertise its planned Snapchat reporting, Guess shared an image of the Snapchat symbol with a makeover to coincide with the race colors. Guess designers also created jackets specific to the race for the models to wear, with the brand vigorously sharing images of the girls wearing the jackets through social media. 

Additionally, Guess has created numerous hashtags to coincide with the event, included on every post such as the hashtags #Gumball3000, #Team82, #GuessVipers, #GuessGumball and #StockholmtoSweeden. This substantial usage of hashtags could be overkill to consumers, causing them to overlook the campaign. 

Brand initiative 
The apparel brand has been working generously to keep up its brand image with mobile and social being the headliner in the initiative. Recently, Guess helped consumers explore its line of sunglasses on mobile via a new advertisement that asks users to snap a selfie and virtually try on different styles tailored to specific face shapes (see more). 

Guess also partnered with Peace Over Violence for Denim Day today, raising awareness and funds to combat sexual violence while driving online sales and its brand image (see more). 

"Speed to market is particularly important with any race, competition, or award ceremony because the news is only valuable for a short period of time," Ms. Lowy said. "Many drama shows have a long lifetime value and can play reruns for many years. 

"On the other hand, competitive shows such as the olympics, the oscars, or the Super Bowl draw massive viewership on the day of the event but they are virtually worthless content a week later," she said. "That is why it is important to get as much visibility at the moment when the content is valuable; social media allows brands such as Guess and Gumbal 3000 to do just that. 

"One of the difficulties of live reporting is that it leaves little or no time for editing content. Guess, which may be used to photoshopping or playing around with its images and videos, will have to role content out as is or complete their editing a lot faster." 

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer