Download an App, Win a Chance to See Lady Gaga and Bono
Yahoo!'s media properties reach 50% of the world's online audience, and we want everyone to know about it---especially advertisers.
To get that message across, we're running a contest during Advertising Week in New York City October 3-7 that lets you interact with photos and headlines on five of Yahoo!'s leading media properties, using an augmented reality app that's downloaded to your iPhone. The sites are Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, The Thread and omg.
While the stories and pages are just mockups, the contest's prizes are very real. Every time you use the augmented reality app to jump onto a simulated Yahoo! page, you're entered into a drawing to win the daily prize of an iPad2 or the Grand Prize of a trip to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to see an October 15 mega-concert sponsored by Yahoo! and starring Lady Gaga, Bono, and Usher.
The concert, called A Decade of Difference, honors 10 years of charitable work by the William J. Clinton Foundation and the former president's 65th birthday. The concert will be broadcast live from the Hollywood Bowl, only on Yahoo!
Game on
If you're in New York next week and have an iPhone, you can play. Beginning Oct. 3, all of New York City will be a "hot zone" where you can access augmented reality simulations of Yahoo! media pages with photos and headlines that you can interact with and instantly share via email, Facebook or Twitter.
Imagine yourself standing next to a virtual Bigfoot on the front page of Yahoo! News, or having it rain money all around you on Yahoo! Finance, or striding down the red carpet avoiding the paparazzi on omg! (see photo). You can interact with more than 30 simulated pages, and the more times you do, the more times you're entered in the drawing.
Yahoo! "brand ambassadors" will be patrolling the streets to help users download the app, take pictures and upload them, and hand out gift cards for our co-promoter Dunkin' Donuts, which will offer additional hot zones at 36 locations near the Advertising Week events.
So check in at the iPhone app store next week to download Yahoo!'s augmented reality app. It's a fun way to learn about Yahoo!'s leading online media sites, and you can win prizes at the same time.
---Bob Pickard
