Game Time
Read the story- Brand
- Chevrolet
- Year
- 2012
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Quiz & Trivia
- Platform
- App
Objective
Chevrolet had bought a heavy Super Bowl XLVI ad package and didn't want viewers tuning out or wandering off to their phones during the breaks. The brand needed a way to turn a passive TV audience into active participants — holding attention through the whole broadcast, driving people to rewatch its spots, and capturing registrations and social followers it could own after the game.
Solution
You download the free app, register, and get issued a personal seven-digit license plate number. Watching the game with your phone in hand, the app tracks the broadcast in real time: the moment a Chevy commercial airs, a push notification fires and drops a trivia question about that exact spot, plus polls about the game and the teams. Answer correctly, or land on the most popular poll pick, and you're entered into prize draws — with one big hook hanging over every commercial break: if your plate number shows up on a car in a Chevy ad, that car is yours. Between rounds you can pull up any Chevy spot on demand, scroll a live Twitter feed and real-time poll results, and share your answers straight to Facebook, all the way through to the final whistle.
Results
703,826 app registrations by the end of Super Bowl XLVI, climbing to over 703,000–700,000+ across the full campaign window; more than 110,000 active users during the broadcast, peaking around 130,000 simultaneous players and 1,500 quiz answers per second. Players answered 10,276,102 trivia questions during the game itself, and 25 million over the campaign, generating 11 million+ page views during the broadcast (35 million+ overall) and roughly 1.6 million hours of in-app usage. The app hit #11 on the App Store's Top Free Apps chart within a week of launch, added 130,000+ Facebook fans and 9,000 Twitter followers, and over 70% of users reported feeling a stronger connection to Chevy afterward. Chevrolet gave away 20 vehicles plus thousands of partner prizes.
- 1
The player first encounters the app through a TV promo — its premiere airs during the NFC Championship on Fox — inviting them to download it for free from the App Store, Android Market, or chevy.com/gametime.
- 2
On registering, the player receives a unique seven-digit "license plate" ID, which doubles as their entry ticket into the car sweepstakes.
- 3
Optional setup lets the player link Facebook so their trivia and poll answers post to their wall, follow an in-app Twitter feed about the game, and enable push notifications that alert them before each Chevy commercial airs.
- 4
On game day the player opens the app with the Super Bowl broadcast running; the app is synced live to the telecast and activates in step with it.
- 5
The core loop plays out during Chevy's ad breaks: real-time trivia questions about the game, teams, and the commercials themselves, plus live polls, appear on screen for the player to answer or vote on immediately — correct trivia answers and picking the most popular poll option both earn sweepstakes entries, and poll results update live.
- 6
Throughout the broadcast, the player watches for their own seven-digit code to appear on a car's license plate inside a Chevy commercial — spotting it wins that car.
- 7
The player can replay Chevy's commercials on demand inside the app to catch a missed code or recheck a trivia answer.
- 8
The player walks away eligible for real-time drawings awarding 20 Chevrolet cars and thousands of partner prizes from Bridgestone, Motorola, the NFL, Papa John's, Sirius XM, and NFLShop.
