Virtual drag race wins gold at New Gen Awards

The annual New Generation Social & Digital Media Awards were held at Montecasino Ballroom, Johannesburg, on Thursday 28 September 2017. AutoTrader won gold in the category of Most Innovative Gamification Campaign, beating Lufthansa, Sanlam, Ster-Kinekor and Hill’s Pet Nutrition.

South Africa’s most visited automotive site won gold for its #COTYDragRace campaign. Dubbed Twitter’s first-ever virtual drag race, fans were invited to tweet and use the hashtag for their favourite car in the 2017 South African Car Of The Year competition brought to you by WesBank. With each tweet, the recipient vehicle moved ahead and closer to winning the overall race which included preliminary rounds and a final.

As support sponsors and strategic marketing partners of the 2017 South African Car Of The Year brought to you by WesBank; AutoTrader wanted to create excitement around the competition with an innovative campaign that would get car enthusiasts talking and imagining what it would be like to drive the cars.

“We wanted to give fans the chance to ‘drive’ their favourite vehicle across the line; for the final phase of our build-up, a microsite was developed that gave consumers the chance to race against each other via a virtual drag race” said AutoTrader CEO George Mienie.

“On Twitter, users tweeted various reasons of support for the competitors which we turned into the fuel that pushed the cars across the finish line. #COTYDragRace trended over 2 days and resulted in excellent levels of engagement from the Twitter community, with a total reach of 2,7 million and total impressions of 10,8 million”, added AutoTrader Marketing Director Angie Lynch.

AutoTrader is the most visited automotive website in South Africa and the 7th most visited website overall. They are a digital marketing company who offer a world-class market-leading solution to buyers and sellers across all types of vehicles, with an established track record of success and business growth over the past 25 years.

The campaign was built in collaboration with Liquorice, a full-service digital agency specialising in a range of services from web to mobile, social media, CRM, content creation and search marketing.

Founded in 2012, the New Generation Social & Digital Media Awards not only honours South African creative agency teams for their innovative use of social and digital media, and cutting-edge use of online media and tools, they also acknowledge corporate companies and their in-house marketing teams from across South Africa for their work on campaigns that help promote their organisations and brands in ground-breaking ways.