Meet Kawasaki and Mr Nigel “Salty” Graves

Sweepstakes and trivia are among the “saddest” tools in online marketing. Give me your data, answer a few silly questions and if you’re lucky you’ll win something. I realize for a lot of brands collecting consumers’ information is crucial to run their business, but I still think sweepstakes and trivia are good when done offline, in a supermarket, and not in the “interactive” media by definition.

In this case Kawasaki has shown there is still soom room for sweeptakes online. To promote their new KFX 450 they haven’t taken the approach “gimme your data I might give you a prize” but, rather “have some fun, gimme your data and I might give a prize“. There is a sensible difference in the two ways of running the promotion, and I appreciated the choice of using an improbable Mr Nigel “Salty” Graves to engage the audience. Of course, such a site is definitely more expensive than a simple html form, but how many brands can afford doing something online forgetting about the “branding” side of the project?

The agency is Fuse Interactive.