ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Marketing Dive acquired Mobile Marketer in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out the new Marketing Dive site for the latest marketing news.

Gumball Rally 3000 team to update mobile blog in real-time

Team Flying Banana will use voice-to-content messaging provider SpinVox to post live tales from the road during the coast-to-coast Gumball Rally 3000 event May 1-8.

Visitors to the Flying Banana site Web site can virtually join in the Gumball Rally experience via both SpinVox mobile blog posts and audio updates. The Flying Banana team from Britain consists of Gumball Rally 3000 veterans Danny Haskett and Lee Wyatt driving a Corvette Z06 in this year's event.

"Speaking is the easiest and most natural way to convey great ideas, thoughts or moments. Sharing is also a natural impulse," said Rachael Lyon, director of communications, North America, for SpinVox Ltd., New York. "By connecting the two simply and directly, we're enabling people to share their life experiences in the most natural way. SpinVox was founded on this principle."

The target demographic is anyone with a mobile phone and something to say, according to SpinVox.

"We've seen the mobile blogging service used across every demographic -- from extreme sports athletes to journalists to people in their everyday lives who want to speak their blog posts in the moment while at events or during a moment of inspiration when out and about," Ms. Lyon said.

"The service is not ad supported," she said. "As with our voice-to-text service, monetization depends on how the service is being deployed, be it through a carrier or direct to an organization."

The 3,000 mile rally course kicks off in Los Angeles on May 1, incorporating stops in Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Dallas and New Orleans. The race finishes in Miami on May 8.

Now in its 11th year, the Gumball Rally is the brainchild of European entrepreneur Maximillion Cooper, who established the event with the idea to unite people through popular culture and the language of the motorcar.

In addition to rally enthusiasts such as the Flying Banana team, the Gumball Rally attracts celebrities across music, film and sports, showcasing 120 cars including vintage, customized and luxury Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and Bugattis alongside America's finest muscle cars and today's greenest hybrid and electric vehicles of the future.

Previous Gumball Rally participants have included David Hasselhoff driving "KITT," the original Knight Rider Trans Am, Jackass's Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn and Loomis Fall in a 1960 VW Camper, supermodel Tyson Beckford and comedian Orlando Jones in a prototype Range Rover, Alfonso Ribeiro a.k.a. the Fresh Prince's Carlton Banks, pro skaters Bucky Lasek, Sal Barbier and Felix Arguelles, taking part alongside Middle Eastern princes and sheiks, Russian billionaires and European rock stars.

The SpinVox speak-a-blog service used by the Flying Bananas is available free to anyone interested in mobile updates for their Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Typepad, Vox or other blog and social network sites.

Participants can update posts by calling a number and speaking the words. SpinVox automatically turns the voice message into text and posts it to the user's desired site.

Tailored for on-the-go usage, with SpinVox users can also bypass the login process for each site, making update posts faster and typing free.

In the U.S., Alltel, Cincinnati Bell and Skype customers can subscribe to SpinVox voicemail-to-text services through each carrier's plan.

To track Flying Banana rally updates, consumers can visit http://gumball.viviti.com/mobile-updates. The Web site, created by Lingo design, will be updated constantly throughout the race.

SpinVox's strategy to get the word out about its platform is organic but targeted marketing.

"We put SpinVox in the hands of people who would naturally want and need a mobile blogging platform and let word of mouth grow," Ms. Lyon said. "For example, we've had ultramarathon runner Charlie Engle use the service to share his story with his followers around the world as he attempted to break the record for fastest run from San Francisco to New York."

Olympic athlete Anna Hemming used SpinVox to live blog her experiences during the Beijing Olympics.

Father-and-son team Matt and Kevin Gaskill kept supporters updated on their South Pole expedition, an attempt to establish 18-year-old Matt as the youngest person ever to complete the journey, with the world's first SpinVox-powered Antarctic blog.

"Team Flying Banana in this year's Gumball 3000 are the latest to share their in-the-moment experience by speaking live blog updates from their Corvette Z06 throughout the rally," Ms. Lyon said. "Seeing and using the service is the best marketing tool -- the SpinVox service speaks for itself."