Dive Brief:
- Apparel brand Under Armour and its digital agency Red Interactive teamed up for a digital scavenger hunt in the Bay Area to launch the Curry 4 sneaker autographed by Steph Curry, per news made available to Marketing Dive.
- Consumers could go to Under Armour Basketball’s Instagram page to receive a mobile interactive map and then challenged to zoom in on and pan around looking for hidden drop sites around the Bay Area. After being given a unique QR code, fans were directed to the hidden drop zones to receive pairs of the new sneakers via drone delivery.
- Given the real-time nature of the activation, the marketing team had to overcome several challenges including uncooperative weather.
Dive Insight:
Out-of-home (OOH) activations have been popular this year, but this campaign took things to a new level combining a digital scavenger hunt element on Instagram, tapping into location-based technology and, for added excitement, included drone delivery. According to the marketer, it was a first-of-its-kind activation, pointing to how marketers are raising the stakes on experiential marketing as more companies jump in, making it harder to stand out. Building in the latest digital technology was a savvy move for grabbing attention in the Bay Area, which is home to many high-tech companies.
The various challenges the team had to overcome highlights how OOH marketing can be tricky as things happen in real-time.
The weather challenge was wind speed as the drone making the shoe deliveries could fly in 25 mph winds, but winds the day of the digital scavenger hunt in the Bay Area were closer to 40 mph on and off the water. This meant the team had to work out different ways to make the effort work. The team also had to come up with a custom drone in order to withstand the signal interference in the high-tech Bay Area. Finally, Steph Curry, the basketball star whose latest shoe was being launched, was originally going to fly the delivery drones, but licensing requirements ended that idea. The drones required a commercial pilots license and more than 75 hours of driving drones time for operators.
