It's late in the big football game. Your team is on the 45-yard line and you're down by 4 points. Do you: (a) run the option; (b) throw the long route; or (c) execute a quarterback sneak?
How about another question? How much soup can you fit in the cupholder of a 2000 Saturn?
With the help of Carlson Marketing Group, these are the types of questions Saturn Corp. has been asking visitors to its www.saturn.com Web site during the past four months. The questions were the key ingredient of the site's special link quiz show called 'Get a Clue.' Unfortunately for all of those trivia buffs addicted to testing their knowledge, Saturn closed the curtain on the game Feb. 4.
'The game was created to entertain and subtly inform while capitalizing on the recent popularity of (ABC-TV's) trivia show, `Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,' ' says Saturn spokeswoman Anne Desztich. However, instead of a million bucks, the only thing Saturn was willing to give away was a $25 gift certificate for people willing to test drive one of its 2000 models. The gift certificates were good for merchandise at Lands' End and Borders Books & Music.
While Saturn is not revealing statistics about how many visitors the special link had or how much the game cost to put online, Desztich describes the effort as money well spent: 'We'll definitely keep this in our marketing toolbox for future use. We've been very happy with the results.'
By the way, you're not supposed to put soup in a Saturn cupholder. And, if you're down to the last play in a big game, throw the long route.
