It’s one of those social media promotional campaigns that everybody’s doing these days, but Vodafone’s Power Pinata competition is actually kind of cool. Vodafone Facebook fans can remotely control a robot named “Carlos” to whack a giant pinata, with prizes to be won when the robot cracks it open.
Players can watch in real time as Carlos takes a swing on their behalf, and select how they want the swing to happen, with options like “The Zorro Swing” or “The Slam Dunk”. And if things seem to be going a bit slower than Voda hopes, they’ll switch the bat the robot is using with an axe or a sword to try and speed things up. If worst comes to worst, they’ll manually smash the pinata at 9pm on December 17. There are 500 prizes inside the pinata, including Samsung Galaxy Tabs and mexican wrestling masks, which kind of makes sense…
Created by creative agency Host, the robot smashing pinata can be controlled using this Facebook app, if you’re willing to give Vodafone access to some of your private information. If not, you could always create your own pinata-smashing robot, I guess…