“Checking Into” Outdoor Lifestyle?

Abstract

The increasing adoption of mobile media in place-making and space-constructing practices as well as participatory culture open up new opportunities in marketing. This chapter approaches mobile location-based games as sites of brand experience, productive play, and value co-creation. It examines a mobile location-based game launched by The North Face (TNF) in China to increase its consumer base by shaping people's lifestyle aspirations. It offers insights into the use of mobile to engage more participants in the emerging market; the role of mobile as the central tool, platform, and the interface of hybrid spaces (de Souza e Silva, 2006) in the integrated campaign; and the value co-creation process by consumers for the brand. It also points to unintended consequences of the campaign, evidenced in consumers' deconstruction and reconstruction of the marketer-designed game process and their distortion of space. More generally, it reveals the importance of understanding the opportunities and challenges in addressing creative consumers in utilising mobile location-based game for marketing purposes.