The Site: “Campus Joyride,” by Fuel Industries, Ottawa

The product: Mazda’s 2007 grad program

The URL: Campusjoyride.ca

The brief: Develop an online platform to inform graduating university and college students about discounts available from Mazda.

The Web: “We’re still in campus newspapers, but we decided to go a different route so that kids could have a little fun and just be engaged with Mazda for 10 or 15 minutes,” said Peter Whaley, Mazda’s senior director of sales and marketing.

The campuses: Students can drive through virtual campuses of Queen’s, Bishop’s and Carleton universities. Fuel initially approached several more campuses about the project. “A whole bunch of them didn’t want to participate just because they have policies against doing anything that involves commercial use of their property .....,” said Brady Gilchrist, executive vice-president of strategy at Fuel Industries. “At the end of it, it came down to who would actually give us permission to do it.”

The deal: Recent college or university grads receive $1,000 off a new car purchase. About 8 to 10 per cent of Mazda’s Canadian sales involve the discount, up from about 2 per cent in the late nineties before the car company began to advertise heavily on campus.

The future: “If we decide that it’s a great campaign and everybody’s having a lot of fun, we’ll probably do different schools next year,” Mr. Whaley said.