VW Driving game breaks iPhone download record

The automotive sector has long since taken up the mobile marketing torch and has been running with it for some time. Just the other week AdMob announced that they had secured a $1.6 million deal for Land Rover and Jaguar for 2009 as automotive continues to lead the way. The VW Polo app follows Audi’s success with its A4 driving game and the VW app take this to another level. The app has already been downloaded over 820,000 times and I’m guessing that, as I write this, a day after the news broke, that it’s probably nearing a million downloads only 2 weeks after its launch at the Geneva Motor Show on 3rd March.

I think that VW’s success has come from spending the time and money to develop a worthwhile game and integrating their branding into it. The game is almost PSP like in quality and gameplay featuring realistic driving physics and steering using the iPhone’s accelerometer. There is also the ability to find your nearest dealer using the phone’s GPS capability so you don’t have to enter your postcode. At time of writing (19/3/09) the game had a 2 ½ star rating and was ranked number 1 in the Top 25 for the UK.

VW could probably have charged people to download it but, instead, they realised the value of getting their brand in the pockets and handbags of a million people and decided to give it away. Let’s say the game cost £100,000 to develop (and this is probably an overestimation so that I don’t make the figures look too good) and reached 1 million people in 2 weeks. That works out at 10p per customer! A pretty good cost of acquisition, if you ask me.

Sure, there’s also the cost to promote the game but most of what I’ve seen has been PR rather than advertising so costs will be low and, to be honest, getting in the top sellers list on the App Store is the best advertising that you can get. Sure, the stats show that after 30 days hardly anybody even opens up a free app but you’re probably going to have completed this game in a couple of days anyway so what does it matter? VW got you to interact with their brand, made you aware of the new Polo and showed themselves to be an agile, tech savvy brand. Can you do the same with £100k in any other media?