Stolen A3 found, Audi's promotion comes to a close.

Audi's Stolen A3 promotion came to a close last night at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, California. The whole promotion started on April 1st of this year, with the 'theft' of an Audi A3 from Audi Forum on Park Avenue in New York. The story line is a little strange, but about 300 people gathered last night in Santa Monica to witness the conclusion which was also webcasted. This is an interesting promotion technique. If you remember, BMW also had their own fictional BMW promotion, but BMWFiles was only one medium. The Audi promotion took the characters and put them into the 'real' world, to tie the story that unfolded online into other events like E3, the Coachella Music Festival, and an American Film Institute party. We find it surprising that Audi went to all this trouble, especially when initial sales expectations for the A3 were so low. We're also not sure how much it will pay off, but perhaps it exposed more people to the A3 who were not already anticipating its release.