27.3.2006
Chevrolet Color Sudoku awarded

The Chevrolet Color Sudoku game has won the prestigious European "Future Marketing Award" in the category of "Best Product or Brand Integration into a Game".

In 2005, Chevrolet launched the new Matiz compact city car. A key part of the pan-European marketing campaign was the online viral element. As an innovative part, the Chevrolet Color Sudoku website was launched with the goal to raise awareness amongst the target group (young urban people with a smart and stylish life they want reflected in their car), create interest in the Matiz and increase traffic to the Chevrolet website.

The Chevrolet Color Sudoku is a version of the popular Japanese puzzle, but using colored cars alongside numbers. It’s a fun and refreshing way to promote the Matiz, putting the car at the centre of the experience without affecting game-play.

A number of mechanisms were used to seed the website URL, and ensure it reached the target audience through a targeted distribution cascade including personal emails to selected agency and client employees, banner ads on Chevrolet websites across Europe, “Send to a friend” functionality, press ads with a self contained Sudoku puzzle and E-newsletter to customers and prospects.

The following numbers prove that the site has been very successful so far:

• over 50,000 visitors
• 32% clicked through to the Chevrolet homepage
• 24% forwarded the link to a friend
• over 11,000 new email addresses have been captured

To visit the Chevrolet Color Sudoku please click here: www.chevroletsudoku.com

About the Future Marketing Awards:
The 2004 Viral Awards were so successful and ensued so much interest from brands and agencies worldwide that the event evolved into The Future Marketing Awards to celebrate a wide range of non-traditional marketing and advertising techniques. There are three regional juries and four award ceremonies (in New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo). The European jury consists of 19 members, representing client companies and agencies. Some important Automotive Marketing professionals as Emma Lownds (Marketing Manager for MINI), Simon Thompson (Head of Marketing for Honda) and Tim Ellis (Global Director of Advertising and Media for Volvo Cars Corp) are part of the jury.