ALK: Sponsorship of Gumball3000
On Sunday 30th April 2006, 240 drivers in 120 super-cars set off from London’s Pall Mall at the start of the 2006 Gumball 3000 Rally.Participants including Tony Hawk, MTV’s Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn and Martine McCutcheon travelled 3,000 miles across three continents in only 8 days.
They travelled from London to Los Angeles taking in the sights of Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Phuket, Bangkok, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas before finishing in Los Angeles on Sunday 7th May.
Hotwire client, ALK Technologies, was one of the main sponsors of the 2006 Gumball. Each car was equipped with CoPilot Live satellite navigation running on the latest T-Mobile MDA Compact II Pocket PC, with maps of the entire route preloaded. For the first time, viewers were also able to follow the Gumballers on their journey via the live tracking site at www.alk.com/gumball.
In order to support the sponsorship, Hotwire worked with the Gumball organisers to set up an exclusive Microsoft web-blog at http://spaces.msn.com/gumball3000-blog/. The Hotwire team spent the Gumball launch weekend interviewing celebrity participants and taking photographs of Tony, Ryan and Bam with their CoPilot devices to use in the blog and in coverage. The team also invited 15 key journalists to attend the Gumball, to meet the drivers and wave the teams off in person.
To support the event Hotwire negotiated a competition and front-page splash with The Independent newspaper to give away CoPilot devices.
During its first two days the Microsoft Gumball 3000 blog – which appeared on both the Microsoft and MSN home pages – drove over 3,000 people directly to the ALK website.
The team also achieved the holy grail – celebrity endorsement when Martine McCutcheon appeared on the New Paul O’Grady Show talking about using her CoPilot satnav “to stop me from getting lost on the rally”.
Following the launch event, coverage promoting the tracking link appeared in The Evening Standard as well as on Pocket GPS World, Mobile Gadget News, Web User, Stuff Online, Bit-tech, Trusted Reviews and MS Mobile. Further coverage is still due to appear with the Daily Mirror and PDA Essentials.
