MediaCom Wins Adweek Media Plan of the Year for Pennzoil SXSW Activation

A well-deserved win. Adweek has named MediaCom USA winner of the Media Plan of the Year for its Pennzoil "Mario Kart Reimagined" activation at the 2014 SXSW festival.

On a live custom-made quarter-mile race track in Austin, Texas, Pennzoil created Mario Kart Reimagined, turning the Nintendo video game into a real-life go-karting experience showcasing Shell's new Pennzoil Platinum synthetic oil.

Go-karts were outfitted with GoPros and RFID technology enabling classic game icons like the banana peel and red turtle shell to throw racers off their guard, while Pennzoil Power Ups served to increase the karts' speed and performance. It's said that SXSW attendees waited up to four hours to do their best Bowser or Princess Peach impressions behind the wheel.

In addition to, according to Penzoil, generating upwards of 1 billion earned media impressions, $2 million in advertising value and $5 million in PR value, Fast Company declared the activation "a Super Bowl-caliber hit," and The Daily Dot ranked Mario Kart Reimagined as "one of the biggest wins in SXSW history."

Of the work, Pennzoil Global Brand Director Chris Hayek said, "One of the things that made Mario Kart great was that it enabled us to capture consumer attention at the biggest tech and innovation party in the world! Iconic brands like Twitter, Game of Thrones and Doritos have all hosted major product announcements at SXSW, and now Pennzoil is in that league of exciting breakthroughs."

This is the second consecutive year that MediaCom has received the Adweek Media Plan of the Year Award; in 2013, the agency won Best Use of Branded Content for Volkswagen's "Beetle Shark Cage" campaign.