Orange launches balloon race across the internet with Poke

The one week Orange Balloon Race, which will take place across sites including Yahoo! and the Sun, has signed up over 13,000 people who are chasing a luxury seven-night holiday prize for themselves and seven friends in Ibiza.

The Orange Balloon Race, designed and delivered by Poke and i-level, will run from June 23-30 and supports the Orange Animals Pay As You Go marketing campaign launched in May 2008. The campaign uses Orange Animal shaped balloons to represent the packages available, based on different types of consumer behaviour.

Contestants all begin from the same starting point, the Balloon Race home page. Entrants then race their balloons across a series of sites, boosting their balloon as they go along to make it travel faster. Players will be able to choose their own Orange animal balloon, which is powered by user-friendly controls that pop-up on screen, tracking their balloon as the race progresses.

Players will also be able to enlist the help of friends to boost their balloons and tools have been built for social networking sites including Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.

Spencer McHugh, head of digital and direct marketing Orange UK, said: "The digital space is becoming an important way for us to engage with our target audiences. The Orange Balloon Race is an exciting and innovative way to raise awareness of our new Pay As You Go Animal packages, while giving our customers a fun and interactive experience with the Orange brand."

Iain Tait, creative director, Poke London, said: "The idea of floating thousands of balloons across the Internet got everyone at Poke massively fired-up. We've loved turning hundreds of sites into a huge playing field for what promises to be an awesome race with an amazing prize."

More information and registration details can be found at www.playballoonacy.com. The site has attracted over 100,000 visitors.