Brief:

• Hyundai is promoting its new Veloster coupe with a scavenger hunt that gives contestants a chance to win passes to an exclusive showing of Marvel Studios' "Ant-Man and the Wasp." The carmaker will hide 500 toy versions of the vehicle throughout Los Angeles and share clues of their locations on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, according to a company press release.
• The toy cars will serve as movie passes to a special July 3 showing, three days before the movie's theatrical release. The event will include gift bag giveaways, custom artwork posters and a display of the Hyundai Veloster, which makes its Hollywood debut in "Ant-Man and the Wasp." Hyundai is urging participants to post about the scavenger hunt, which begins later this month, on their social channels through the hashtag #HyundaiVeloster. 
• The scavenger hunt is part of a broader integrated marketing strategy developed with Hyundai's agency of record Innocean USA to support the Veloster's role in the film. Hyundai this week began airing a TV commercial inspired by the upcoming film and the brand is sponsoring the livestream of the premiere event, which will run on Marvel's digital platforms. During the livestream, two segments will be dedicated to Hyundai.

Insight:

Interactive games like Hyundai's scavenger hunt aims to transform passive audiences into active participants who engage with the brand via mobile devices and in-person events. By leveraging increasingly sophisticated smartphones, marketers can reach a variety of target audiences in an entertaining, gamified fashion to spark interest in a product or drum up excitement around a movie premiere. In this case, Hyundai saw an opportunity to connect with both moviegoers and mobile gamers and ride the success of the first "Ant-Man" movie, which made $315 million globally in 2015. The scavenger hunt tie-in leverages mobile to create a physical brand experience at scale and demonstrates its recent steps in expanding its mobile finesse.

While Hyundai's scavenger hunt will urge people to seek out toy versions of the Veloster in real life throughout Los Angeles for a pass into a prescreening of the movie, other brands have created virtual scavenger hunts to promote products by using augmented reality (AR) features in mobile apps to lead smartphone users on a journey to find virtual markers. Mondelez International's Oreo brand this year introduced "The Great Oreo Cookie Quest" that gave players clues on where to find hidden virtual cookies in everyday objects as part of a sweepstakes to win a trip to Africa or California. Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Tilly's, Unilever and Universal Pictures all have introduced AR treasure hunts to promote their products in the past two years.

Hyundai's "Ant-Man" promotion comes less than a month after the company introduced in-vehicle payment to customers using their car's infotainment screen. The Hyundai Blue Link connected-car technology will soon let drivers find and pay for coffee, gas and parking while they're on the road and may want to purchase food or beverages, but can't access their phones or physical wallets. Hyundai partnered with Xevo, a tech developer for the automotive industry, to create the Hyundai Wallet payment platform to store a customer's credit card or PayPal account information securely.