ESRI’s “How Far Does My Car Go on a Gallon of Gas?” Site and Campaign

I got an e-mail, as it seems many bloggers did, touting the beta of “Map My Miles Per Gallon.” It basically does a “drive distance” for two different vehicles on a single gallon of gas. The result is a map, starting at a location you select, with two amoeba-like polygons. The smaller one shows how far the the lower mpg car could travel, and the larger one where the higher mpg car could reach. It’s sort of fun to key in your current car (my 2000 Subaru Impreza is listed at 23 mpg in the city) and a friend’s and compare them.

But that’s not my point. The e-mail came from eMergeGIS and simply noted the site was an ESRI site. So I asked who sent the e-mail. Here’s the rest of the story from ESRI:

The MapMPG site was built by ESRI’s BusinessMAP group in Dallas.  The site is useful tool, but is also an advertisement for BusinessMAP.  eMergeGIS works closely with ESRI-Dallas handling the fulfillment of BusinessMAP.  (BusinessMAP sells mostly via direct channels - toll-free number and the Internet rather than the standard ESRI sales reps.)...The technology behind it is ESRI’s, but not BusinessMAP… BusinessMAP does have drive-time functionality, but this is really just an awareness campaign – an interesting place to put an ad so that more people discover BusinessMAP, or at least ESRI.