Electronics manufacturing company Casio is driving awareness and sales for its new camouflage watch series with a mobile-enabled scavenger hunt.

Local players will physically participate in Miami, as others will take part online for the #NeverBlendin artistic celebration. Local participants will use the G-Shock application to connect directly with Google Maps to navigate through the hunt and Google Street view to locate G-Shock.

“I think a campaign like this is timely with so much emphasis put on World Cup soccer,” said Tony Vlismas, senior director of marketing and sales engagement at Polar, Toronto.

“Competition is on everyone’s mind,” he said. “I hate to use this over-used cliché, but there’s a blurred line between offline and online it seems, these days. So for Casio to involve both a virtual and physical component to the campaign, I think really speaks to them understanding the target market they’re going after.”

Mr. Vlismas is not affiliated with Casio, but agreed to comment as an industry expert.

Casio was unable to comment before deadline.

On the hunt
Participants begin the journey by signing up online, connecting the app to the user’s smartphone.

Consumers must uncover hidden logos around the city as the logos have been camouflaged within featured artwork created by artist Jona Cerwinske.

Winners of the competition will be given admittance to an event promoting the hunt. Participants who complete the event will also be able to enter for a chance of winning tickets to the 2014 U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, CA.

Casio released a YouTube video containing details of the scavenger hunt featuring camouflage graphics as well as promoting the campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #NeverBlendin.

Recruiting fans to actively participate in a campaign shows the brand’s desire to become face-to-face with them. Through this initiative, the brand can personally interact with its loyal followers and learn how to provide better products to them.

Scavenging for ideas
Scavenger hunts have become a popular concept for brands.

BeaconCrawl, an interactive bar crawl event supporting bars in lower New York that were hit by 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, integrated beacons with a mobile application to drum up business.

Beacons were installed in the sponsor venues and various locations along the way, guiding crawlers to secret locations via on-screen instructions, where they enjoyed special drinks, perks and were presented challenges and information, thereby enhancing social interaction. BeaconCrawl took place on May 20 in New York and the event was created by Aurnhammer (see story).

Online delivery service GrubHub teamed with Snapchat to put together a scavenger hunt, too.

GrubHub finished off its first-ever week-long Snapchat scavenger hunt in which it randomly gave away free grub while engaging with consumers on the increasingly popular channel.

Every day that week GrubHub posted a new story on Snapchat that invited consumers to take part in a daily challenge for a chance at winning $50 of free food from GrubHub. Consumers were asked to send a Snapchat back to GrubHub with the daily challenge, and ten winners were randomly selected each day (see story).

Scavenger hunts require extra planning and each detail must be thought out completely for a successful campaign to take place.

“With attention spans being very short these days, users might not stick around long enough to participate,” Mr. Vlismas said.

“The approach needs to be simple, clean, and easy to follow,” he said. “Casio, G-SHOCK, #NeverBlendIn, camouflage, artwork, scavenger hunt… there’s a lot going on.

“However, there’s so much buzz around smart watches, so for Casio to bring this adventure to mobile shows that they understand its demographics — or at least who it’s targeting with the watch.”

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon, editorial assistant for Mobile Marketer, New York