Any sort of recurring promotion needs something new to keep it going. Now in its fourth year, LG's Texting Championship is adding a Facebook component that brings the competition to the social networking world.
"Each year we look to evolve the overall contest to make it bigger and touch more consumers," Tres McCullough, co-founder of Fathom, the agency that created the effort, tells Marketing Daily. "In year two, we televised the tournament on MTV. In year three, we got into sports marketing and mobile gaming, and dipped our toe into Facebook. [This year], we've really fine-tuned the Facebook application and look at it as one of our key drivers to stimulate participation in 2010."
The Facebook app includes three mini-games. One, "Text Attack," evaluates the speed and accuracy of texting, while "Text & Dodge" requires competitors to dodge obstacles on their computers while texting on their phones. The third game, "D U Spk Txt?" asks users to translate text abbreviations. Game scores are tallied and placed on leader boards with chances to win prizes such as LG handsets, gift cards and T-shirts.
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"It's completely dynamic, with 11 levels of games that give you real time results," says Fathom account supervisor Alexis Sheehan. "It compares you to last year's texting champions, and it keeps a running score for each of the games. It's the first [Facebook] application where you're using a handset and getting real-time online results."
As qualifying for the tournament, which takes place in September, gets underway, LG will hold online tournaments for the games online, giving people from all over the country the opportunity to qualify for the finals and its $100,000 grand prize.
Although the Facebook App is currently available, marketing behind it and the tournament will not begin until May, and will begin to ramp up in mid-June, McCullough says.