Chevrolet Releasing Super Bowl App To Engage Fans During Game

Chevrolet is “releasing an app for mobile phones and tablets that it hopes will give it entree to consumers' social-media activity” during Super Bowl XLVI, according to Brian Steinberg of AD AGE. The Chevy Game Time app, which will become available by the start of the Giants-49ers NFC Championship game Sunday, "will pose trivia and poll questions on subjects including the game, teams and commercials.” Consumers who “answer trivia correctly or choose the most-common poll answer will be entered into drawings to win one of thousands of prizes from Chevrolet as well as Bridgestone, Motorola, the NFL and NFLShop.com, Papa John's Pizza and Sirius XM Radio.” Everyone who downloads the app “will also receive a unique ‘license plate’ number,” and fans whose numbers “match any plate in Chevy's Super Bowl spots will win a vehicle.” Chevy's Super Bowl app “also reflects marketers' desire to get the most out of the average $3.5 million that advertisers are paying for Super Bowl ad packages” (ADAGE.com, 1/19). In N.Y., Stuart Elliott wrote the app will “be promoted in a commercial during Sunday’s NFL playoff games in which Tim Allen, the announcer in Chevy spots, says, ‘Play along with the Super Bowl as we put the game in your hands.’” GM Global CMO Joel Ewanick said that the “goal of the app is to help viewers ‘find our commercials earlier’ and garner them attention both during and after the game.” Ewanick: “The more we can bring attention to the commercials -- everyone’s, not just ours -- the better.” Ewanick said that Chevy is “still deciding the models that will appear in its other spots in the Super Bowl.” The new Cadillac ATS “will be promoted in the Cadillac commercial.” Ewanick said the app needed the approval of the NFL because “this is the first time this has been done.” Chevy will also “sponsor the live stream of the Super Bowl on nbcsports.com” (NYTIMES.com, 1/19).