Road to happiness

New York – Chevrolet is joining forces with IBM’s Watson to measure users’ positive social media impact in exchange for free fuel.

• The ad campaign was launched as part of the International Day of Positive Thinking on 13 September
• IBM Watson analyses users’ Twitter and Facebook accounts and gives them a positivity score out of 200

Chevrolet’s Find New Roads website uses IBM’s supercomputer to evaluate the positivity in users’ Facebook and Twitter statuses. The site provides a personality summary, picking out the most used positive words and detailing people’s top three positive traits.

As part of the campaign, Chevrolet visited three petrol stations, in Buenos Aires, Cape Town and New Orleans, and gave consumers the opportunity to take the test and pay for their fuel with the scores, with more free petrol given for a higher score.

‘What Chevy is doing with Watson enhances not just personal engagement, but also helps show customers the value they are delivering to others through positivity,’ said Stephen Gold, chief marketing officer of IBM Watson. ‘It’s a creative way of using technology to amplify a uniquely human attribute.’