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The Business Blog at Intuitive.com
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Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since 1980 and
is recognized globally as an expert on both technical and business
issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related
startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed.
He's a columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera and
Linux Journal and frequently appears
in other publications both online and in print.
Additionally, Dave maintains four weblogs:
The Business Blog at Intuitive.com,
Ask Dave Taylor,
Dave On Film,
and
GoFahterhood.
Based in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and
frequent guest on radio and podcast programs, as well as active member of
his community and busy single father to three children.
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This is the future of advertising: The Audi A4 Driving Game
Have a look at the Apple iTunes Store in the iPhone Applications area, most popular free applications, and you'll see marketing evolving before your very eyes. The number three most popular application in the iPhone app store is:
For years advertisers have explored different methods of pushing advertising into the mobile space, and various attempts to have ad sponsored phone service, ads before calls, ad-funded dialup services and even location aware ads pop up as SMS messsages as you travel around have all basically fallen flat.
Now savvy car company Audi shows us how it'll be done in the future with Audi A4 Driving Challenge. Here's the opening screen, you can see they've put some effort into this:
Here's the thing: it doesn't matter if it's a fun game or not, it doesn't matter if it's better than the other driving games (like Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Card 3D), what matters is that while Ford (NYSE:F), Toyota (NYSE:TM), Chevrolet (NYSE:GM), Mercedes and other automotive manufacturers try to figure out how to utilize and leverage the ever-evolving marketing landscape, Audi has leapfrogged and taken the next step.
You watch, this is just the beginning. Soon we'll have bar-branded drink mixing iPhone apps, cookware-sponsored recipe management, rental car agency-built driving directions applications, and much more.
And along the way, I already know of some films that are developing iPhone applications to help promote and market their upcoming films. Brilliant!
We're on this road to stay, the road of moving the computer from our office to our home, from our desk into our pocket (by way of our laps).
Kudos to Audi for this revolutionary application. Oh, and try it too, it's pretty fun: Audi A4 Driving Challenge
Mercedes was kind of the first into this space, albeit not on the iPhone. They came out with a branded online driving game before the iPhone ever existed.
URL here: http://www.mercedes-amg.com/games/drift/index_en.html
It is extremely addicting to play, and those that got good at it are so far above the rest of humanity, it makes you wonder how many times they had to play it.
It's good to see that other companies are "getting in the game". I believe BMW was the first to have a .mobi site, but no games AFAIK.
Posted by: Jared K. on August 23, 2008 5:18 PMHey Dave, don't forget The Discovery Channel's Cannon Challenge. Reviews since release: 789. Another exercise in branding :)
URL here: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=287031640&mt=8
Posted by: Michael Sitarzewski on August 23, 2008 11:35 PM
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The Business Blog
