Treasure Hunt Advertising: Please grade this idea

[biz123]

Magazines, tv shows, radio shows, and every other medium gets their profits from sponsors. It is doubtful that anyone here owns a magazine or anything like that. But why not own a treasure hunt venture (with zero start-up costs) which also depends on sponsors?

Who doesn't like treasure hunts, especially when there is a good prize at the end? Each clue would be sponsored. For example, one clue will direct you to a restaurant, the clue in the restaurant will direct you to look at a company's billboard, the clue found on the billboard will direct you to another sponsor's pamphlet in some random place, and so on...

The end prize can be something like an itunes $20 gift certificate or it can also come from a sponsor, such as a $20 gift certificate to some electronics store. If you get enough sponsors, you'd have no problem giving the treasure hunters the ending prize. The key is to decide how many sponsors to have and what the ending prize will be. You want the prize to be good, but, at the same time, not have so many sponsors to pay for the prize that the treasure hunt takes forever.


What do you guys think?

The sponsors get 100% attention. The treasure hunters get a prize. And you get profit, depending on how much you want to charge per sponsor. You can cater the treasure hunt to the demographic the sponsors want to target. This idea came to me from watching the Amazing Race on CBS. I'd be curious to know whether you guys have seen something like this.

[biz123]

Any opinions? I'd really appreciate it.

[J0schm03]

Already being done...

Check out my signature.

We're set to launch in January 2009, but you can join and play for a $10 f.y.e giftcard if you'd like in our test hunt we've set up.

[biz123]

Already being done...

Check out my signature.

We're set to launch in January 2009, but you can join and play for a $10 f.y.e giftcard if you'd like in our test hunt we've set up.

Nice, doing it online allows for a lot of potential players and sponsors. However, I think it can also be done off-line. You can get really creative in how the players interact with the sponsors.

[pboychuk]

Sounds like a lot of confusing logistics to me, atleast to make it fun. I find it interesting that whenever there is a topic about a new creative business idea posted on this forum someone seems to pop up and have something similar going on or in the works.

[J0schm03]

Sounds like a lot of confusing logistics to me, atleast to make it fun. I find it interesting that whenever there is a topic about a new creative business idea posted on this forum someone seems to pop up and have something similar going on or in the works.

It's hard to find that new idea that no one else is doing. That's why we had jumped on this opportunity a while ago. We've always been into the "free" scene. We use to do all those free ipod sites you hear about. And we made some good money getting the items free and then selling on ebay.

But we wanted to make something more fun and still offer free items and we came up with this idea. We saw it had been tried before by a couple of other companies but saw a major flaw in the way their sites were set up. So we had to jump on the opportunity.

It's really not too confusing though. We have a number of sponsors on each hunt. You can choose to participate in the sponsors in whatever order you want. When you click on a sponsor a new window opens up showing you the clue and all the stats for the hunt. You search the site for the answer to the clue and that's all it takes. It's the competition and rush on time that makes it fun though.

It's fun to see how you end up compared to everyone else. Even more fun if you win!

[J0schm03]

Nice, doing it online allows for a lot of potential players and sponsors. However, I think it can also be done off-line. You can get really creative in how the players interact with the sponsors.

I absolutely agree. If you do a search you can see that in some major U.S. cities they do some sort of annual city wide scavenger hunt. In fact my friend, who's also a co-founder of our site, participated in something like this in our home town.

It's a unique idea and I think if done right you could definitely do something like this off-line as well.

[biz123]

I absolutely agree. If you do a search you can see that in some major U.S. cities they do some sort of annual city wide scavenger hunt. In fact my friend, who's also a co-founder of our site, participated in something like this in our home town.

It's a unique idea and I think if done right you could definitely do something like this off-line as well.

Yeah, I looked online and found that some newspapers have treasure hunts which encourage participants to look through their ads.

Pretty much any "unique" idea has already been done and has been thought about. Regardless, an idea alone is not going to do anything. Its the implementation of it that counts.

In regards to making the logistics easier, you can integrate the internet into a real world treasure hunt...

You can have a grand prize that is worth around $500 (an hdtv from Joe's Electronics shop for example). Get around 500-1000 people signed up before-hand for the treasure hunt online. At a specific time, the website reveals the first clue which gets everyone going. The fastest person(s) wins the prize. The treasure hunt would take the players through sponsor locations . The participants would have to take samples from the sponsors and perhaps even buy something small from them in order to get their clues. You can charge a lot for a sponsorship which would give the sponsor guaranteed revenue (if the participants were forced to buy something for around $3 in order to get a clue). Of course, you'd have to tell the participants that they'd be forced to spend $3 for the treasure hunt.

Also, if you organize it all online, you can wait until you have the amount of participants that the sponsors would like.

[biz123]

Any more opinions guys? The core benefit of this to the sponsors would be the creative ways that the hunt can be tailored to them. For example, a shoe shop wanting attention can make the hunters look for some special shoe throughout the entire store, thereby making all the participants see what the store has to offer.

How much do you think businesses would pay for a sponsorship which guarantees 100-200 new people (according to the sponsor's desired demographic) in their store? Of course, I'd have to design the race so that the participants aren't rushing from place to place.

I know I have to ask my potential sponsors, I'm just curious what you guys think.