The Winner of Volvo’s #LastEverC30

Volvo #LastEverC30 Winner

Remember Volvo’s genius social media competition to give away the last production model of their awesome little hatchback, the C30? Well, they have a winner!

Huge congrats to James McKenzie! After tweets using the hashtag #LastEverC30 moved the car from Gothenburg, Sweden to England, Volvo released cryptic clues to its location. James picked up on the clues, found the little car in North Oxfordshire, tweeted #GiveMeTheKeys to Volvo and now he’s the proud owner of the Last Ever C30. Here’s the winning tweet:

Last Ever C30 Winning Tweet

What a great campaign! However, the campaign’s website looks like it has been kind of abandoned. Volvo has the winner up with a congratulatory note, but hasn’t removed the twitter widget that asks people to tweet an outdated message of “Solve the #LastEverC30 clues to win the car today.” If I worked for Volvo, I would suggest doing a photo shoot with the winner and putting a real face to the completion of the campaign. Perhaps even keeping a sporadic follow up blog would be fun. I’m sure the new owner wouldn’t mind updating the public on the adventures of his prize once in a while.

Overall, I think Volvo did a great job with their #LastEverC30 contest, but I would recommend proper closure. An abandoned website doesn’t cut it.

On more of a gearhead note, here are some notes on what made the Volvo C30 such a great little car.

Volvo Uses Social Media to Give Away the Last Ever C30

Volvo C30

I always liked the Volvo C30. I remember sitting in one at the Toronto Auto Show a few years ago and admiring the well thought out design. Alas, I never owned one and now it looks like I never will. After making 900,000 of them, Volvo is killing the C30. But this post isn’t about me lamenting the loss of something I never had, it’s about how Volvo is leveraging social media to send the little hatchback out in style.

Volvo C30If you live in the UK, you’ll have a chance to win the last ever production Volvo C30. The catch? You’ll have to find it to win it. The contest will see people tracking the car through a website and the Twitter hashtag #LastEverC30.

Starting on June 13, every time someone uses the hashtag they will be entered to win other prizes and the car will move slightly closer to the UK from its starting point in Gothenburg, Sweden. When it arrives in the UK, Volvo will release four clues to its whereabouts, giving people a chance to find it and win it.

This is a brilliant move on Volvo’s part. The brand is well known for quality products, but so far, that hasn’t translated into engaging young drivers.

This is a great way to get the younger generation involved with the Volvo brand and generate some street cred.

Do you live in the UK? Will you be looking for the #LastEverC30?

Happy 10th Birthday, WordPress!

WordPress turned 10 yesterday. Hard to believe, really. Seems like it was just a couple years ago that I built my first Geocities site. A horrible mess of blinking and flashing pretending to be a record label, it was a pretty cool project when I was 16. As you can guess, that was a lot more than a couple years ago and the web has evolved greatly. Anyone can have a slick looking, properly functioning website now and, for the most part, we have WordPress to thank for that.

Not just a blogging platform, WordPress is a fully functional content management system that powers over 18% of the web. When you think about it, that’s a staggering number. WordPress stats claims over 66 million sites, and that’s just on WordPress.com, it doesn’t even count self-hosted sites such as this one. I’d guess that 66 million is nowhere near the actual number.

WordPress has given countless people the ability to build an online business. Mashable started as a WordPress blog. The same goes for TheNextWeb, TechCrunch and more. It’s given me an additional income stream, as I enjoy building and customizing sites that work for small business (Need one? Get in touch). It’s taught me to understand code. It’s given countless small businesses the ability to sell products online and manage every aspect of their own business. In short, it’s changed a lot of lives and had a huge impact on the online world.

wpbIn celebration of this huge milestone, Manage WP is giving away the farm. Their huge WordPress 10th Anniversary Giveaway includes prizes from WPMUDEV, Elegant Themes, Arvixe Hosting, Sucuri and Manage WP. Enter here.

Bonus contest: Elmastudio is giving away 5 of their premium WordPress themes. Just leave a comment about why you like WordPress here.

Do you know of any other celebration giveaways? Post them in the comments.