How did the idea for ‘Lexus Rally of the Day’ come together as a gamification concept — and what was the insight that unlocked it creatively?

Kyra Lyden: In terms of the insight, it came from the audiences’ media behavior. Gaming is now part of the sports experience, and sport is consumed as an ecosystem, not a single screen.

Mobile is where sports fandom happens. Second-screening and sports gaming turn live sport into participation, creating scalable brand connections through replayable, shareable moments.

Steve Cochran: This was one of those briefs that felt a lot like you’re staring at a puzzle to solve. Lexus, as a sponsor partner of the ASB Classic, New Zealand’s premium international tennis tournament, wanted to use the 2026 competition to announce the arrival of the new Lexus RZ. In particular, with focus on its ‘drive-by-wire’ steering system and yoke steering which are a first for a car available in New Zealand.

Talking about a car, let alone a specific product feature, through a tennis sponsorship could result in a very contrived solution – but a simple word-play connection between a tennis rally and a car rally prevented that. Both types of rallies involve controlling objects moving at speed in various directions, and this became a perfect way to integrate the two properties in an elegant way. On top of that, a yoke steering wheel is somewhat the same shape as a mobile phone, which was a great help!

Sponsorship activations sometimes drive engagement at the expense of brand meaning. How did you ensure ‘Lexus Rally of the Day’ did both?

Kyra Lyden: The job was simple to say, hard to do: make it a product demo, a brand experience, and a sponsorship activation — all at once. Getting brand, product and partnership to pull together is the hardest part of this kind of work. For Rally of the Day, it was outstanding creative thinking that got us there. Steve and his team were able to make lateral connections between the car model, the tennis, and the brand to develop an idea that could do it all.

Yoke steering is a feature that only makes sense when you feel it. How did the ASB Classic sponsorship become the vehicle for solving that problem?

Craig Burton: Sponsoring an event gets you so far – but activating that sponsorship in a way that draws people into the product gives you twice the value. ‘Rally of the Day’ gave us an interesting and relevant way to capture attention during the ASB Classic and put Lexus technology at the forefront.

It wasn’t literally demonstrating the car on centre court – but it came pretty close through its virtual experience! One of the most significant differences with the yoke steer-by-wire system is the limited turning required compared to traditional steering. At low speed, you get full lock by turning just 150 degrees in either direction.

Sponsoring an event gets you so far – but activating that sponsorship in a way that draws people into the product gives you twice the value.

We replicated that by turning your mobile phone into a pseudo yoke steering wheel, with its dynamic turning radius built in. This allowed people to get a feel for the steering as they navigated the online rally circuits we created, which was a unique way to have a kind of ‘test drive’.

The word “rally” works in both tennis and driving, which gave the campaign a natural connection between the sponsorship and the product. What did that overlap give the experience?

Steve Cochran: The play on the word rally led to the idea of an interactive experience to allow people to drive a tennis rally, which not only sounds interesting, but naturally puts car steering at the forefront of the experience.

The experience was built using real ball-tracking data from actual match rallies. How did you harness the unpredictability of real rally data without letting it work against the experience?

Steve Cochran: We knew we could capture ball data from individual rallies that would inform the exact spots on the court you would need to drive to. License was taken in allowing the car to slow down and turn one-eighty to drive back to the opposite end of the court, as obviously a car behaves quite differently to a tennis ball. Of course, we only selected the best rallies to create driving courses from – a three-shot rally doesn’t make for much driving fun!

The experience uses the phone’s gyroscope to simulate the feel of yoke steering, all within a mobile browser. What was involved in bringing that to life?

Steve Cochran: It was quite a technical build. We wanted the experience to be accessible without having to download a special app. This meant building it to be useable through your browser. We also wanted it to feel like it was natively within Instagram, so you weren’t having to click somewhere else.

And of course, we needed it to work for both Apple and Android phones. To achieve all this, we used the phones’ camera gyro and built-in parameters to mimic the turning data of the yoke steering system, so you could tilt your phone much like you tilt the yoke steering wheel to steer.

A lot of branded gamification can feel disconnected from the product itself — entertaining in the moment, but sometimes difficult to sustain beyond novelty. What separates meaningful interactive experiences from gimmicks?

Steve Cochran: There was definitely novelty in the experience we created, but it was relevant novelty rather than just for the sake of it. Novelty is what made it interesting enough to get the audience’s attention. The ‘gamifying’ element wasn’t just purely entertainment, it was a message announcing the RZ’s unique steering system.

And of course, this was in the context of a tennis tournament, in a way that was engaging and directed specifically at a tennis audience. But our big KPI wasn’t game-play numbers. It was awareness and leads. The game was just an interesting way to get them.

Gamification becomes gimmick the moment it stands still. By building ours on real, evolving inputs, we ensured it played like a game – not like an ad.

Kyra Lyden: The difference comes down to whether the interaction expresses a truth about the brand, or distracts from it. Meaningful gamification creates a role for the brand by demonstrating what it stands for, turning participation into proof. Gamification becomes gimmick the moment it stands still. By building ours on real, evolving inputs, we ensured it played like a game – not like an ad.

The campaign drove a +41% increase in Lexus website visits and nearly 3x growth in visits to the RZ model page. What did those results reveal about the relationship between interaction and product interest?

Steve Cochran: To experience yoke steering by driving a tennis rally on your phone was, fundamentally, a way to bring attention to the product. The fact that you could actually experience it as a unique demonstration of the steering was just a fun bonus.

The lift in enquiries and website visits shows that this campaign secured the car the attention we were after. But also importantly, this campaign delivered to the Lexus brand position, Experience Amazing, as Lexus work should.

Craig Burton: By putting this level of focus on the new Lexus RZ and turning it into a genuine experience, we were able to drive in dealership enquiry and website traffic in a way that sponsorship alone often doesn’t. It showed that when people can actively engage with a product, it creates a much stronger level of interest and intent.

Importantly, that interaction also created a path to the next stage of the journey. It gave us the opportunity to reengage with customer prospects and continue the conversation, meaning the sponsorship didn’t just build awareness, it played a meaningful role in the sales funnel.

‘Lexus Rally of the Day’ demonstrated how gamification can work as a product introduction tool. Where do you see gamification evolving next for the brands you work with?

Kyra Lyden: Some of the best work at Cannes last year integrated seamlessly into gaming environments audiences already love – like Call of Duty. That’s the ideal. But in New Zealand, limited scale and access mean we have to think differently. That’s where Kiwi ingenuity comes in – ideas that grow out of the context itself, rather than being layered onto it.

Rally of the Day did exactly that. It turned the rally into the game, using real moments to create something live, credible and made for our market. That’s where this is heading – not more games, but more ways of applying gamification principles and thinking to real-world contexts.

Images provided by Saatchi & Saatchi NZ.