French automaker Peugeot have launched a new custom map in Fortnite – specifically, Peugeot Design Studio partnered up with Gameloft’s brand engagement division Gameloft for Brands to create the “Peugeot Polygon City” custom map in the game, as part of the automaker’s marketing efforts for its new concept vehicle.
Peugeot Polygon City In Fortnite
Essentially, this is Peugeot’s marketing exercise for its new Polygon Concept, with the Peugeot Polygon City modeled after the concept car’s “Hypersquare” steering wheel if you look from far above the map. Players can complete challenges, collect tokens, and customize the Polygon Concept in real time; to access the map, simply boot up Fortnite and enter the island code “4592-5340-1652” through the game’s Discover tab.
While this marketing exercise involves a game, Fortnite as a teen-friendly battle-royale shooter has somewhat morphed into a marketing platform of its own when some of the largest virtual events ever hosted happen right within the game’s universe. Let’s side-step a bit and explain the car side of things: the Peugeot Polygon Concept was revealed just earlier this week with a super small footprint plus some stark interior colors, but as per Top Gear, this vehicle serves as an indicator of what the next-gen Peugeot 208 is going to look like.
The “Hypersquare” steering wheel is a fully steer-by-wire implementation, meaning there is no mechanical linkage between the tires and the steering wheel. Most vehicles today use electric steering as assistance to make turning the wheel easier, rarely committing to full steer-by-wire mostly for safety reasons; since EV’s rise to the market however, this has changed somewhat with many EVs starting to use this approach as carmakers engineered better redundancy in the system in the unlikely cases of steering failure.
As a matter of fact, Peugeot is not the first in recent times to utilize this method of marketing; local airline AirAsia has opted for Roblox for its rendition of a virtual world to showcase its services and themed spots, and it looks like more brands will took notice of this approach to spread their messaging (although the ethical concerns of advertising towards children is debatable, to say the least).
Pokdepinion: Advertisers are fully aware of the idea of “start ’em young”, I think.
