Take a Street View Drive with Google Maps

I think there must be a rule in the automotive industry that you can't have an advertising campaign for a car without featuring Google Maps Street View. It seems it is is Peugot's turn to create an impressive Street View application to promote the Peugot RCZ.

RCZ View is an application that allows you to create any route in Google Maps and then watch a Street View stop motion animation of your created route. It takes a little while for the application to grab the Street Views for a route but it is worth the wait.

If you want to save a little time you can just watch the preprogrammed routes.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Find a Golden McRib with Google Maps

Mcdonald's annual limited period only McRib is available again until November 14. To help promote the burger the company has released a Facebook game The Quest for the Golden McRib.

The Quest for the Golden McRib uses Google Maps to allow players to search for one of ten virtual golden McRibs which are hidden in various McDonald's restaurants around the world. The game is available as a Facebook game, in which you have to select a McDonald's restaurant from a Google Map and then complete quests and unlock clues, in order to find one of the golden McRib's.

As well as requiring players to select restaurants from Google Maps the game features a number of Google Maps Street View scenes between each quest.

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Play Gran Turismo with Google Maps

Gran Turismo 5 has used Google Maps Street View to create an interactive banner ad for the game.



The banner ad lets users navigate around three of the race tracks that feature in the game using Google Maps Street View.

To drive the car in the banner ad game use the arrow keys on your keyboard and the mouse. Click on the numbers above the steering world to navigate to each of the three featured tracks.

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Win a Nissan Versa with Google Maps

Here is another great marketing campaign that uses Google Maps to effectively grab the interest of users and at the same promote a product. Nissan's My Versa Road Trip lets users share their favorite road-trips and have a chance to win a Nissan Versa or daily iTune gift card prizes.

To enter the competition you need to share your favorite car trip, by plotting the journey on a Google Map and selecting your choice of soundtrack. You can then view your road-trip animated on Google Maps, with Street View tours of all the points you entered on the trip with the chosen sound-track blasting away through your speakers.

As well as adding your own great road-trips you can browse the road-trips created by others. The animated tours, created with the Google Maps for Flash API, with Street View highlights and accompanying highlights are very impressive.

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Book a Flight with Street View

The Lufthansa airline has created a clever booking form that allows users to click on a map to input the destination of a flight.



As well as auto-filling the booking form with the selected destination a click on the map also displays a Google Maps Street View of the chosen destination. For example, if a user clicks on London a Street View of the Houses of Parliament is displayed to help entice the customer to book a trip to the UK.



Lufthansa: Street View Live



Via: Google Geo Developers Blog



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Street View Roulette

Here is another clever marketing campaign that used Google Maps to promote the Volkswagen Bluemotion.



To promote the Volswagen Bluemotion's low fuel consumption a competition was created called Bluemotion Roulette. The campaign used Google Maps Street View to turn a real car journey into an online game of roulette.



A Golf Bluemotion drove the E6 Norwegian road with a full tank of fuel. Using Google Maps and Street View entrants were asked to guess where along the road the car would run out of fuel. The prize for guessing correctly was a brand new Volkswagen car.



Unfortunately the campaign website is no longer live but you can see how the campaign used Google Maps in the video above.



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Google Map of the Week

Normally the Google Maps of the Week is a round-up of the best maps to have featured on Google Maps Mania in the previous week. This week we have saved the best to last.



Levi's Roadwear is a clever marketing campaign that uses the Google Maps API to help promote Levi's jeans. The application maps out and lets users explore the Levi's Roadwear range of clothes.



The app includes two map layers, 'terrain' and 'denim'. The terrain layer uses custom made map tiles of a sketch of the Roadwear range. If you switch to the denim layer the tiles switch to a photograph view of the clothes.



Using the zoom controls you can zoom in on details in both layers. The app also includes an animated tour of the map that includes videos and photographs of a band, Mermonkey, undertaking a fictional tour around Levi's Roadwear range.



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Loving You is Easy with Google Maps

Tiffany & Co - Love is Everywhere

You might not be able to afford Tiffany diamonds for the special one in your life but you can share your love with this Google Map from the self proclaimed 'world's premier jeweler'.

To share your favourite romantic locations you just need to click on the 'Share your love' button and place the heart shaped map marker on the correct spot on the map.

If you are single and have no romantic love to share you can browse through the hundreds of romantic locations added by other users in preparation for the next time you date. You never know if you find the right location you might then be able to add your marker to the 'I Just Made Love' Google Map.

I Just Made Love Map

If you've just made love and you want to shout about it add yourself to this Google Map. This mashup uses Google Maps to show the locations in the world where people have just made love.

You can add your own marker to the map by right clicking on the map, choosing 'indoors' or 'outdoors' and leaving a comment. The map is available in a number of languages (you can set a language by clicking on the appropriate set of panties at the top right of the screen).

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Create an Event & Win a Mini

Wanderlust Map

Mini want you to share your ideas for exciting events. Share your event idea and you could win the weekly prize, like a Mini Countryman Picnic Seat Set. If you turn your idea into a real event you then have the chance to win a brand new Mini Countryman.

You can share your idea on the Mini Wanderlust Map. This Google Map shows event ideas and real upcoming Wanderlust events. If you click on a map marker and you like the idea of the submitted event you can vote for it to win the weekly prize.

If you haven't got any ideas for your own event you can just use the map to find upcoming events near your location.

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The Extraordinary Journey on Google Maps

The Extraordinary Taxi Ride

Western Australia Tourism has used Google Maps to help share the experiences of their 'extraordinary' taxi driver and his lucky passengers. The agency hired a taxi driver, Doug Slater, and sent him off on the adventure of a lifetime around Western Australia. The journey consisted of 11 legs and the agency selected a different pair of passengers to take part in each of the journey legs.

The Google Map shows the route that Doug Slater took on his journey and links to the stories and photographs compiled by his passengers. The map includes some of the wonderful locations and sights that can be seen in Western Australia.

It also features a 'Local Experts Recommend' section. These are 'must see' locations in Western Australia that have been added by locals. If you know of a special spot in Western Australia you can even add it to the map yourself.

According to the WA Tourism Minister "…the campaign website had more than 160,000 visits, with people spending 15,000 hours following the ride. The campaign has many months to go, but already generated media exposure worth more than $2.6 million and reached a potential global audience of more than 60 million."

Via: All Things Spatial

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Another Street View Marketing Campaign

Alfa Giulietta Virtual Ownership

Alfa Romeo have come up with an ingenious marketing website to promote the Alfa Giulietta. The site uses Google Maps Street View to let you see how the car would look if it was parked outside your house (I've used the Arc de Triomphe in my screenshot as that's where I now live).

To create your own virtual postcard you just need to enter your address, select the colour of Alfa Giulietta and you will be presented with your virtual driveway. You can also adjust the size of the car and rotate its angle.

Your virtual postcard comes with a unique URL and with the option to post it to Facebook or Twitter.

Via: StreetViewFunny.com

Now one from the archives ...

Shelter - Bling Your House

UK housing charity Shelter have created this amazing Street View site that lets you decorate your house with some Christmas bling. Once you enter your postcode and find your house you can choose from a number of Christmas decorations to give your house that Christmas glow.

Once you have finished you can then share your creation via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail. The site has been created to remind you that no-one should be homeless at Christmas - so once you have created your decorated house please remember to give generously to Shelter.

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Google Map of the Best Places to Live

Calvin Klein Live Free

Calvin Klein have created a Google Maps mashup to promote the CKFree fragrance. The map shows the personal choices of model 'Jamie' of the best places to 'live free'. As buying a house in most of the places chosen by Jamie will set you back a few million I'm guessing that when Calvin Klein say 'free' they don't mean it in monetary terms.

Users of the map can add their own favourite locations to the map and, in doing so, have a chance to win a bottle of CKFree. Personally I never knew you could live in the Cowboys Stadium. I'm moving in tomorrow.

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