Hotwheels pulled off an interesting and (VERY) expensive ad campaign today.
They created an entire video short/mini-movie scenario with a cast of drivers using IZOD and INDYCAR as part of it with a created backstory and more than it’s fair share of computer generated effects. The payoff? Getting people to go to their Facebook page to see who the “mystery driver” was.
The crux of the tv spot was the world record jump attempt in a truck. You can see that here: www.youtube.com/hotwheels. I’d be shocked if the amount of money spent on that exclusive TV spot was anything less than $1M. The point of all of the build-up? Sending people to their Facebook page to reveal who the “mystery driver” was.
Hotwheels obviously thinks that the money spent on driving viewers to Facebook was a good decision. Granted, Facebook wasn’t their only basket to put eggs in as they do have a corporate YouTube channel (see link above), but they were betting on driving massive traffic to their page. As of right now (9:30pm-ish on Sunday night) they have 401,226 fans. If you multiply that by the $3.60 that Allfacebook.com has found each fan to be worth in media exposure, that’s over $1.4M in value.
Are they justified in spending over $1M on essentially a giant Facebook campaign? Sure, if they got enough fans to equal in value the amount of money they spent. Was it a huge gamble? Absolutely. Would they have done it without believing in the value of having an engaged fan base on Facebook? Absolutely not. $1M will build a lot of Hotwheels cars.
For more info on the Hotwheels campaign, go here: http://www.autoblog.com/2011/05/29/tanner-foust-completes-record-setting-team-hot-wheels-jump-at-in/
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