Mercedes Promotes Play

With the prestigious Monaco Gran Prix this weekend, MB posted on Twitter and Facebook, a challenge to Gran Turismo 5 fans to best the real lap-times of team drivers Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg.

Couple things interesting about this:
A small example of doing something that gets people to play along w/your brand.
Further promoting the MB SLS AMG and sponsorship of GT5 among core performance enthusiasts.

No prize offered by MB, other than bragging rights. And maybe a seat on next year's MB F1 team?

What co-partnerships do we have w/our clients' brands that we could create some playful participation among their fan community?

Is entertainment check-in really that social?

Saw this story that suggests that a new crop of entertainment check-in apps allow for social TV watching. I've been playing around with a couple of these entertainment check-in apps, Get Glue and IntoNow lately, and still find them both less "social" than the types of conversations we would see blow-up on Facebook or Twitter during the TV events like the Superbowl, the VMAs, or even weekly episodes of American Idol.

Love the 1-click simplicity of IntoNow, however it lacks the social aspect of fostering dialog between show fans. The "shazam-like" feature makes it really easy to use. Anyone knows how the recent Pepsi Max/MLB "Free 20oz" promotion performed?

Get Glue is basically a 4sq. version where users are awarded badges for sharing the type of content you're consuming. Users can type in a short comment, or review of the content. I've used this feature to decide if I want to watch a particular episode or movie from Netflix. For the user, there's a bit more work required to type-in the content name, and the app does not recognize or allow users the ability to add web-based content. Missed opportunity here?

For people who are into entertainment check-in apps, what kind of rewards could we excite them with? How could we make them more "social"?