Arrrrr, did someone say treasure?
Friday, February 13th, 2009 by Marita Upeniece 
I love travelling and hiking and treasure hunt used to be one of my favourite childhood games, so weirdly enough I only found out about geocaching a few days ago.
If you also missed the ‘in the know’ boat, it’s basically a high-tech treasure hunt – a brilliant combination of the old-fashioned game and new technology, with Internet and social-networking added to the mix. Geocachers hide and seek small trinkets (caches) at different locations all over the world with the help of GPS gadgets and then log clues and photos on the Internet for other gamers.
Some tourism companies and national parks have already tapped into this growing craze. Brecon Beacons National Park, for example, helps visitors set up caches within the park and also offers special Geocoins with unique tracking ID codes to promote the park.
And with over 700,000 registered caches around the world and a huge following online (abundance of support groups on Twitter and Facebook – the largest one has nearly 14,000 members), I can see why.
New technology is developing fast (the iPhone 3G is great for geocaching), and could open up some interesting opportunities for experiential marketing and PR in many areas, not just travel. Imagine finding keys to a new car in a cache, instead of the usual trinkets? Or bringing your local geocachers together to regenerate parks in disadvantaged areas?
Of course, as with anything new there are potential pitfalls, from someone walking into a lamppost or being arrested for shady behaviour (you might look a bit odd walking down the high street with a TomTom) to the more serious issue of a bomb squad carrying out controlled explosion of your branded treasure cache (read ‘suspicious package’).
Still, I have a feeling geocaching’s here to stay – this week’s Time Out London has devoted a whole page to the subject, and I’ll keep my eyes out for the first big branded campaign.
Indy’s claim “we do not follow maps to buried treasure and X never, ever marks the spot” might be proven wrong after all!
