Evinrude is cruising the country with a mobile museum promoting its history and running a fantasy fishing game to get marketing mileage from the centenary of the first commercial outboard motor.
Ole Evinrude built the first commercial outboard motor—all 1.5 horsepower of it—in 1909. The 53-foot moving museum tells the story from the early days of Evinrude’s invention and its evolution since then, with displays of vintage and contemporary outboard engines.
The online fantasy fishing game at www.evinrude.com offers Evinrude engines— and ultimately an Evinrude boat—as prizes to spawn good will and Web site traffic.
The Evinrude 100th Anniversary Tour mobile museum will be making stops at Forrest L. Wood Outdoors Tour events and boat shows through the year. Next stop: the Detroit Boat Show on July 12 and 13.
“We want to rekindle the history behind the brand and reconnect people to it,” Roch Lambert, Evinrude general manager, said. “We’re really taking them through the years of innovation behind the brand.”
And Evinrude hopes all that will “leverage” some museum visitors’ to buy a motorboat during the peak summer sales season, Lambert said. Evinrude is also offering takeaways of branded pins, caps, and T-shirts.
The big takeaways are tied to the fantasy fishing game, challenging fishing aficionados to pick the season’s top pro anglers. The game is tied to FLW events, with an Evinrude engine awarded, along with smaller prizes, every few weeks. The player accumulating the largest total point score by December wins an Evinrude motorboat and a day of fishing with the winner’s favorite pro fisherman.
FLW Outdoors has been running pro fishing circuit tournaments for the past decade.
Evinrude is building awareness for the game, which it launched last December, with online marketing on its own Web site and on fishing sites.
Evinrude also sponsors the FLW’s fantasy fishing game, which offers a top prize of $1 million.
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