MEDIA RELEASE
29 November 2016
More than 67,000 Kiwis out Data Hunting
It’s only one week into the inaugural Data Hunting season and more than 67,000 Kiwis are toting their smart phones and
heading out to track and capture data across the country.
Likened to a new augmented reality sport, disguised as an interactive advertising campaign, data hunting has been
developed by market disruptor 2degrees.
All that’s needed to go hunting is a smartphone and the Data Hunt app – no gun or hunting licence required. Hunters then
use the app to physically search out ‘data pins’ which have been ‘virtually’ dropped across New Zealand. Once they get
within a certain proximity of a pin they can spin it to redeem 2degrees data.
2degrees Chief Marketing Officer Roy Ong says while the Data Hunt was designed as a fun campaign for customers it’s fast
becoming bigger than that with the Data Hunt app now topping both the Apple and Play Stores – beating out downloads of
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat in New Zealand.
“Data Hunting is now a thing in New Zealand. People are forming hunting parties and heading out at all hours to scour
hillsides in pursuit of our elusive blue and gold pins, there were over 45,000 unique hunting sessions alone this
weekend! ”
The gold pins are considered the prize of the Data Hunting world and Ong says something that can transform your monthly
data balance.
“What is remarkable is that we are only one week into Data Hunting season – it will run through the summer period as we
give away over 200 million megabytes of data – based on our current run rate we are not sure where this thing could end
up!”
Ong says even non-2degrees customers are downloading the app and hunting. These hunters have the choice of joining
2degrees to redeem the data before the end of the hunting season.
“Although we have been very careful to place our pins in safe locations we do very much encourage people to hunt with
care.”
Data Hunt Fast Facts:
• 67,400 active users to-date
• 15million megabytes of data caught to-date
• Over 400,000 hunting sessions to-date