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Facebook contest: Around the world in 80 clicks

A suitcase company has launched a Facebook contest that lets you send virtual suitcases to your friends with the goal of sending them them as far as possible in 80 clicks. Brilliant, spammy, or both?
Written by Emil Protalinski, Contributor

Here's a very clever way to leverage Facebook. Samsonite has launched a contest called Around the World in 80 clicks, the goal of which is to send virtual suitcases to Facebook friends abroad. You then invite them to re-launch the suitcases to their own Facebook friends, and collect miles/kilometers to create, in a three weeks period of time, the longest chain of Facebook friends around the world.

To play, you can select up to four of your Facebook friends and send them a virtual Samsonite suitcase (you even get to pick your favorite color for the suitcase!). If you Like Samsonite on Facebook, you get another chance to launch up to four more suitcases.

The distance traveled by the suitcase is calculated for you: from the residence of the player who has launched the suitcase to the residence of the friends who receive the suitcase. Locations are provided by Google Maps, but are also crosschecked through Facebook's indication of the players' location and their IP addresses. In other words, the game requires a Facebook account with your current location filled in.

The contest prizes total €50,000 ($65,600). If you send a virtual suitcase the furthest distance around the globe in 80 clicks, you'll win a travel voucher worth €5,000 ($6,600). If you are one of the participants of the three longest chains of the game, you may win one of 150 Cosmolite suitcases.

From a marketing perspective, I think this is a brilliant way to push your brand. From a user perspective, getting spammed with Samsonite suitcases from your Facebook friends probably isn't very fun.

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