• by Liz Tascio , November 29, 2005

There wasn't even a press release.

In a first for a Fortune 500 company, Budget launched its "Up Your Budget" treasure hunt almost entirely through blogs, says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads.com.

This fall, the rental car company ran a four-week, 16-city contest with $160,000 in prizes. Players watched videos and read clues on UpYourBudget.com, then hunted for an orange sticker posted in a public place. The first to submit photo proof in each city won $10,000.

News broke on sites like Adrants.com; ads appeared on Cityrag.com and Buzzmachine.com. Word spread fast (there were two winners in the first four days), not surprisingly on the blogosphere, Copeland says.

"It's this giant beehive," he says. "Instead of just dropping your message from above, it's dripping it in and then letting the community play with it."

The campaign advertised on 74 blogs including music, lifestyle, urban hipster, and baseball blogs to capitalize on the World Series, says marketing strategist B.L. Ochman. Budget made buys on boingboing.net and bought keywords on major search engines.

Budget had never used blogs before, but the idea made sense; most of its reservations are made online by customers who are young and tech-savvy.

"What happens online is very important to us," says Scott Deaver, executive vice president of marketing for Cendant Car Rental Group Inc., which owns Budget. UpYourBudget.com scored tens of thousands of visitors each day. The entire promotion, including prizes, cost less than one 30-second spot on a highly rated TV program, Deaver says.