Kenneth Briodagh

Hyundai has partnered with the Rhys Millen Red Bull Rallycross team, which will race the brand’s new performance model, Veloster, in the 2011 U.S. Rallycross Championship and perhaps the Summer X Games. At the six planned races this year, the on-site activations will focus on the performance tuned production vehicles, Genesis Coupe and Veloster, and local brand managers will be giving attendees tours of the cars and collecting attendee data via surveys on buyer interest and brand consideration. Large flat screens will play race footage and rallycross highlights.

Wireless provider Sprint, the title sponsor of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, engaged potential and existing customers at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 20 with race-related products and driver interviews in a 100,000-square-foot open-air activation space called the Sprint Experience. Inside, fans were treated to driver meet-and-greets and easy access to functioning show cars and the Sprint Cup Series Championship trophy. To get fans in on the racing action, the brand also provided them with eight full-motion NASCAR racing simulators.  

Charlie the Tuna on Feb. 11 celebrated his 50th birthday as the spokes-tuna for StarKist with games, giveaways and photo ops for consumers in New York’s Times Square. Jillian Harris, designer on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “The Bachelorette,” co-hosted the festivities, which took place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It has become a de facto rule of the road to incorporate social media in all live activations, and at the auto show, some of the brands made a point of integrating Facebook, Twitter and the others in a well-thought out, strategic way instead of just tacking it on.

There were two simulators at the show—one from Ford and one from Toyota—and while they were very similar, one was better. Ford put up the Fiesta Rally car and Toyota went with an FJ Cruiser, but both had off-road courses, and both sat the driver in a rig that rolled on an x, y and z axis depending on the driver’s steering, rolling and breaking. Both were a ton of fun but the winner was clearly the Toyota sim, for two important reasons: you got two laps instead of one, and it had a product education component.