MINI Getaway is one part tag, one part FourSquare. Last year MINI turned a large area of Stockholm into a playing field where players could win a MINI Countryman. This year it’s Tokyo and the MINI Coupé. Using the MINI Getaway app, players home in on a virtual Coupé. Once they’re within 50 meters of the virtual car, you can “take” the car. Easy right? Trouble is, once you possess the virtual Coupé, your competitors are now after you. Any competitor that then gets within 50 meters of you can steal your virtual car away. Whoever can possess the virtual MINI Coupé until the end of the game wins one in the real world. Pretty slick.
Obviously, players have to stay within the playing field, but for the Tokyo version of this game it’s a pretty big playing field. It’s 240 square miles, to be exact. In a city as vast and dense as Tokyo, winning that new Coupé will be as much a game of endurance as speed. The campaign in Sweden is credited with doubling MINI’s sales there last year, so hopes are high for the campaign in Tokyo. If the Japanese video didn’t quite make sense, try the Stockholm video below.
[Source: Creativity]
<p>Seems pretty fun to me! I’m all ready for it. BRING IT ON</p>
<p>That does sound fun. Have fun Tokyo……</p>
<p>I wish I lived somewhere that they might play that game. But I have a feeling Orlando isn’t going to be a prime market!</p>
<p>Hmm – that’s a really neat concept. I wonder though, if you turn your iPhone off while you have the virtual MINI… if that “protects” it? Or if you simply disable location services when people get close? Surely you don’t immediately lose the virtual MINI because cell services can sometimes drop out. There has to be some kind of reasonable limitation where the app can lose the signal for a short period of time without giving up the virtual MINI.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge to me though seems to be how to “protect” it when you need to sleep.</p>
<p>I’d love to learn more about the rules and logistics, even though I will probably never get to play it!</p>
<p>Hi Edge, no you can’t protect the virtual coupe, once you lose GPS/Data signal, the coupe is dropped on the street.
If the signal is recovered within 120 seconds and the coupe is not yet picked by another player, you will re-gain the coupe, but at the rate the game’s played, (currently there are more than 10000 “hunters” – likely be more as the game comes to close this Sunday) you’ll be lucky for others to leave it alone for 2 minutes!
This gives interesting twist to the game, as there are many tunnels in Tokyo that takes just about 2 minutes to go through. Taking the best route seems the key to winning the coupe.</p>
<p>Wow. I’d SO take several days off of work and travel somewhere in the US to do this. I don’t know what my strategy would be, but I know even if I didn’t win, it would be a blast! I’d have to talk a friend into coming with.</p>
<p>Been playing it for the past several days, and it’s CRAZILY GOOD FUN!!! I believe it’s the biggest of the MINI GETAWAY to date, stretching across whole 23 Metropolitan Tokyo districts.
Been all over Tokyo, including places I’ve never visited before.</p>