Spin and Angry Birds Introduce the “Rage-Rider”, and a First of Its Kind Branded-Fleet Campaign
These days, visit almost any American city, and you’ll see electrically powered dockless scooters cruising the streets, in mass, getting people where they need to go. What you most likely won’t see is the peculiar sight of riders exuberantly screaming at their two-wheelers with looks of delight and amusement on their faces. “Wait, people screaming at scooters?” you’re probably thinking. Let us explain.
As part of their 10th-anniversary celebration, Angry Birds, the bird-flinging, pig-popping gaming phenomenon, with 4.5 billion downloads and 6 million daily users, contacted us to help them execute an idea for their milestone-celebrating #BringTheAnger campaign. The basic gist being that anger, when pointed in the right direction and expressed the right way, can be a positive force in the world. Rovio Entertainment, the parent company of Angry Birds, envisioned “Rage Riders,” a custom line of voice-powered electric scooters that go faster the louder you vent. These vehicles (to be distributed to select influencers, not the general public) would provide a real-life embodiment of anger converted into positive energy.
Our team at Spin jumped at the opportunity to undertake this very fun, creative idea and to partner with such an iconic brand. But to execute on a project like this, two essential things were required: Trust and Technology.
Andrew Allison, Director of Advertising and Sponsorships at Spin, has been developing a relationship with Rovio for some time now. “We have an 8-year history with their team, and there is a lot of inherent trust built up,” he explained. “When they bring a project like the ‘Rage Rider’ to us, in all its complexity, they have full faith that we’ll get it done. And, from our side, we know that we’re great to partner with and can be relied upon to deliver on even the most outside-the-box ideas and bring them to life.”
Powering a scooter from yells and screams is a pretty outside-the-box idea. How in the world do you turn the sound of someone’s voice into propulsive energy? Here is the simplest way to explain it: our engineers designed a built-in microphone technology, which measures decibels, that directly connects to the accelerator of the scooter. The accelerator is programmed to associate particular decibel levels with correlating ranges of speed. So, for instance, if you yell into the microphone at 50 dB, the accelerator would register the sound of your voice and propel the scooter to a designated speed, say, 10 mph. Pretty cool, huh! And, as is the case with all of our projects at Spin, we made safety a priority, with features such as a directional microphone to reduce ambient noise.
Along with collaborating to build Rovio’s “Rage Riders,” we’ve also embarked on a branded-fleet ad campaign, the first of its kind in our industry. On November 4th, in Austin and San Diego, we unveiled 1,000 scooters with Angry Birds wraps. In these two cities, through December 31st on selected vehicles, you’ll see the fan-favorite and loveable faces of Terence, Matilda, Bomb, Hal, and the rest of the gang. And as a special perk, the first 21,000 riders, in each city, to redeem a promo code will receive $10 in ride credits, courtesy of Rovio. Plus, all first-time riders will receive $5 in credits. It’s a fun concept that we had a blast coming up with, and we’re confident our riders will love it.
This type of pilot opens doors to a whole new world of collaborative brand opportunities for our company, and our industry at large. We are grateful and excited to be thinking big and paving the way for these kinds of unique partnerships. The way we see it, apropos to Angry Birds in-flight, the sky’s the limit.
