Volvo is taking a very unique approach to its advertising for the Super Bowl this year. Rather than simply have the network air its commercials during the breaks, it has decided to compete with the game directly for viewership.
Called “The Longest Drive,” the automaker’s smartphone game is reminiscent of dealer and radio contests where people have to keep their hands on the car to win it. The difference here is that Volvo is concerned with your eyes. Participants will compete to log the most amount of time looking at stock footage of the Volvo S60 in the hopes of claiming one as a prize.
Mercedes-Benz tried something similar last year with its digitized “Last Fan Standing” competition. In that contest, people were asked to keep their finger on a Mercedes-AMG C43 Coupe as the company monitored their cell phone, waiting for them to make a mistake. Unfortunately, mistakes were made long before the contest began.
Prior to kickoff, technical difficulties caused a delay. Mercedes never managed to sort out the problem and ended up turning the game into a random drawing to appease disgruntled contestants.
Volvo’s contest is similar in concept, but not execution. Rather than keeping your digit pressed into the phone as you pray for the other players to magically fall asleep, Volvo wants you to keep your eyes on the screen while it runs b-roll of the S60 sedan. Presumably, one can still blink, but take your eyes off the screen for a second and you’ll be kicking yourself for every microsecond lost to another player.
Framed as a virtual test drive, the game uses facial recognition technology to lock onto a person’s face and detect when the person’s eyes are no longer directed at the screen. In marketing materials provided by the automaker, the actor hired to portray the contestant has a huge smile on their face, but this actually seems torturous. Volvo is basically asking you to voluntarily participate in the advertising equivalent of the “aversion therapy” featured in A Clockwork Orange.
The three people to hold out the longest will be crowned the victors. However, there’s a not-so-minor catch. Participants aren’t really competing for the S60. Instead, they’re fighting for the opportunity to receive a two-year subscription to Care by Volvo, which includes access to a new S60 Momentum and routine maintenance and insurance, but requires you to give the car back after 24 months.
“Volvo first made waves on football’s biggest night in 2015 with our interception campaign, asking people to nominate who should get a new Volvo on Twitter whenever a car commercial played,” said Bob Jacobs, VP of Marketing, Brand and Communications, Volvo Car USA. “This campaign is an iteration on that. The Volvo S60 symbolizes the belief that you should follow no one and focus on what you think is best. At Volvo, we feel that this approach is better than just running a television commercial, it brings more excitement and engagement to our fans.”
Terms and conditions apply, of course. Volvo says you must be at least 18 and possess a valid driver’s license to be eligible to claim the prize. But you also might want to hit up S60LongestDrive.com to see if your phone has the necessary equipment with which to play. Considering everything the contest entails, would you really want to?
[Images: Volvo Cars]
Well that sounds awful, and the prize – a free lease – is lame. But there are plenty of people who have nothing else better to do, and will spend days of their life staring at a screen if it means they get something for free.
There are people doing this now for NO prizes at all.
Fair enough there!
touche
Yup. We used to have quite a Football clique among the huge retired military population in my town. Now we play cards instead of watch the game, or go to the VFW and get drunk.
So much for going to a Sports Bar as a group and getting loud while eating a ton of chicken wings with celery sticks coated in Bleu Cheese Ranch Dressing.
“We’d like to congratulate our winners – Jim, the movie propmaster from LA; Bruce, the forensic reconstruction expert from Chicago, and Artem, the mobile development expert from New York”
Nailed it.
So, if I mount a photo of my face about a foot from the screen, and plug my phone in for constant charging….I win?
One presumes the software will look for lighting and proportion variations that come with slight rotation of the head, and other small cues, as well as disallowing absolutely perfect attention with no blinking or changes in eye tracking target (not sure how accurately you can manage that with the camera).
I’m fairly sure it would be possible to defeat it; the question is whether it’s possible to figure out what specs you need to meet and then implement a solution without losing so much time doing so that a regular ol’ meatsack beats you to the prize.
One would think that, but I’d wager this app won’t be anywhere near that sophisticated. If you can fool it into thinking you have a finger on it it’s a very easy win.
But if it’s easy to defeat, then probably lots of people will defeat it, which means you’ll just be up against a thousand or so other people who also have an almost maximum ‘score’. So it comes down to a lottery anyway.
How about we celebrate SB win with burning some chinese-made volvos?
Leave it up to “Chinese marketing brilliance” to come up with this controversial tactic as part of their advertising strategy.
What were they thinking?
Probably that’s why they need to steal intellectual property. They don’t have any intellect of their own.
In Paris they do it daily.
I’m torn between being the nutcase that tries to win, and being the person who says anyone who tries to win is a stupid nutcase and ignore it.
The prize is a Geely S60? The only way to lose is by playing.
Those Chinese Volvo jokes were so clever for a few weeks there back in 2010.
When Volvo’s sedans stop being Chinese Accord-knockoffs, it will stop being funny.
Is this a political/ethnic thing with you, or have you just been burned by too many cheap Walmart BlueRay players?
I get that the Honda Accord compares well to previous S60s and arguably even a CPO S80 (of which I own one). But the newer S90 has a different, very premium feel. If the S60 shares any of this DNA then the anti-Geely rhetoric is going to sound even emptier in the future than it already does today.
Taking a knee… from the NFL. Well played, Volvo.
What’s second prize? Two Volvos?
I won’t be watching anyway; all the commercials have gone to crap and nothing is fun anymore with all the SJWs waiting to be offended.