Top Gear Turbo

BBC Worldwide asked us to create a unique web presence for TopGear Turbo – a partwork magazine with collection/trading cards. Rather than produce a standard web site to promote the magazine that would have a very short lifespan and be of limited interest to the young audience, they wanted to engage the users by providing an online extension of both the magazine and the cards.

The three things form a triangle – magazine /cards / web site – that provide three entry points for the TopGear Turbo experience. Any one of them (magazine in a supermarket, cards at a newsagents, web link that a friend sent you) could be the first point of interaction with the brand, so they are all designed to promote each other.

The web site features information about the magazine and promotional material for the cards as you would expect, but its main focus is on the games and the garage, which features a range of 276 cars that have been featured on the TopGear show. As you collect the cards, you can tick them off in your garage to boost your cool rating, and enter the unique codes on some cards to enhance the online games by increasing the number of turbo boosts and bombshells available to you.

The six games are based on televised TopGear stunts, and include a race to the North Pole, a survival mission against a Challenger 2 Tank, and a slippery bobsleigh challenge. The presenters are also featured – collect the super rare Ultimate Stig card and you’ll be able to drive like him in all the games to achieve the highest scores.