For some com­pa­nies, hav­ing strong brand aware­ness and rep­u­ta­tion are absolute­ly fun­da­men­tal for busi­ness. Brand is the vehi­cle that allows con­sumers to dis­tin­guish prod­ucts from that of their com­peti­tors, and enables them to gain a sense of loy­al­ty. For these brands, it means cre­at­ing a brand iden­ti­ty, and rein­forc­ing that idea in the minds of con­sumers.

In the tire indus­try, where often peo­ples’ choice of prod­uct is a clear point of pref­er­ence, it’s impor­tant for com­pa­nies to cre­ate a brand iden­ti­ty and con­sis­tent­ly rein­force their brand.

Miche­lin’s lat­est mar­ket­ing cam­paign is both a cel­e­bra­tion of the brand’s 125 year his­to­ry, and a great exam­ple of a brand build­ing their equi­ty via inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and con­sumer engage­ment.

#MichelinQuest: A Quest For Adventure

Every­one knows the Miche­lin Man. Not every­one will know him by his name — it’s Biben­dum after the Latin ‘to drink’ — but mil­lions of peo­ple around the globe are famil­iar with his icon­ic image.

Miche­lin’s 125th anniver­sary has seen the brand launch a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that com­bines geo­caching, social media, and user-dri­ven engage­ment and con­tent, as a means of rein­forc­ing the brand’s posi­tion as one of the fore­most tire and rub­ber man­u­fac­tur­ers around the world.

The brand have cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal trea­sure hunt, hid­ing 2,000 Miche­lin Man tire gauges and encour­ag­ing would-be trea­sure hunters to find, pho­to­graph, and share their encoun­ters on social media. The most liked pho­tographs would then put suc­cess­ful trea­sure hunters in run­ning for a envi­able trip to expe­ri­ence Miche­lin-starred din­ing in New York, San Fran­cis­co, or Chica­go, or try their hand at For­mu­la E rac­ing in Mia­mi or Los Ange­les.

To par­tic­i­pate, users are asked to  sign up for a free account on geocaching.com, nav­i­gate to their near­est Biben­dum hotspot, and once they’ve dis­cov­ered their con­cen­tri­cal­ly inclined friend, pho­to­graph him in as adven­tur­ous a light as pos­si­ble, and share the image on social media.

Users can then con­tin­ue the fun by giv­ing Biben­dum a new hid­ing place, geo­caching their posi­tion for fel­low geo­cachers to find.

In an inter­view with Digi­day, Jen­nifer Smith, Direc­tor of Brands for North Amer­i­ca at Miche­lin explained:

“The his­to­ry of our com­pa­ny is such that we’ve always encour­aged pro­vid­ing a bet­ter way for­ward for peo­ple. [The Quest for Adven­ture cam­paign] seemed like a very nat­ur­al, fun and engag­ing way to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate our her­itage around mobil­i­ty, around an activ­i­ty that is very pop­u­lar with­in a pas­sion­ate group of peo­ple.”

Mobility

When you con­sid­er that Miche­lin is active­ly cel­e­brat­ing their “her­itage for mobil­i­ty,” it’s no coin­ci­dence that the cam­paign relies on con­sumers hav­ing the use of smart­phones. A notable aspect of the cam­paign is in how it ties togeth­er online/offline chan­nels, the out­doors, social media, and pho­tog­ra­phy, by using fea­tures that con­sumers have avail­able on their mobile devices.

It makes for a extreme­ly cre­ative mar­ket­ing cam­paign, and the response has been hot. Accord­ing to Miche­lin, they received near­ly 6,000 requests from geo­cachers eager to vol­un­teer to hide their tire gauges across the U.S., despite only have 2,000 avail­able.

Don’t be sur­prised to see bul­bous white mas­cots on your feeds in the next few weeks.

Let us know your thoughts on Miche­lin’s Quest for Adven­ture cam­paign. Do you have any oth­er exam­ples of inno­v­a­tive uses of tech­nol­o­gy to fuel user engage­ment?