Pokemon GO Road Trip – A Brief Interview With Jack Wilcock

The Pokémon Go Road Trip has started and is slowly making its way across England, into Europe over these following weeks. We had a great opportunity to Interview Jack Wilcock, Head of EMEA Marketing at Pokémon GO while at the Manchester event, and got to ask all about the new event format. 

We found Jack sitting a little way away from the GO Road Trip bus — as there was quite a crowd situated around it for the majority of the day. We started off by asking about the brand new event in Manchester and how it’s more of a micro event compared to Safari and GO Fest 2025, Jack mentioned “You can’t do a GO Fest every month — so what we’re kind of looking at, is — are there more opportunities to do things and cover areas across Europe that we’ve never done before, like Manchester?”. 

After being asked about the Pokémon Road Trip bus and how it adds a bit more presence to the event, Jack also mentioned  “You could do an event every month, I’d be down and the truck is very visually striking”. So, this could be a sign in the future that we could expect more of these sorts of events. 

We continued to probe about some of the more rural areas. I’m lucky to have quite a constant local community where I play, but have noticed that for some of the more out of the way areas it can be difficult to have much of a community. Whether it be due to physical or network constraints or just a lack of interest. 

Jack mentioned that there are a number of areas in the country that are “not viable logistically”, but he thinks about “how we service as much of the countries and continents as possible within the realms of logistic possibility”. So, if you are based a little out in the less-accessible areas of, say England, you are in the mind of the marketing team and they are thinking of ways to reach you. 

A good example of this would be at the various Pokémon GO Road Trip sites where you have access to a research opportunity in an area around the buses. In this case, spinning stops could give you a research opportunity to earn a Summer Flair Pikachu. Even if you can’t take part in the Community Ambassador organised, timetabled microevents, you are still in some way involved in the trip. 

We also asked about how the final area for the trip is at Gamescom, which is a ticketed event. He mentioned that he “thinks it’s a balance between having some in the middle of the city [where] gameplay is not locked, it’s open for everyone”. Jack went on to say, “even at Gamescom, it was less about doing a ticketed experience and more about being at Gamescom” where over quarter of a million videogame fans gather. 

The Road Trip seemed to be more about reaching out to, and connecting with, people rather than being a paid event which is a change, considering Pokémon GO is already quite a heavily monetised experience, and their Safari and Go Fest events are ticketed, premium experiences.

We asked about the current MLB sponsorship events that are happening in America, which are running parallel to the Smyths and McDonalds partnerships that certain areas are seeing.  When asked if we could see other events like this surrounding the Road Trips, Wilcock replied: “It needs to be a brand that the value of what we are doing, it’s got to align with the Pokémon company, I don’t think it’s a case of just shoe horning in as many brands as possible.”

The Pokémon Go Road Trip is still continuing to its very end at Gamescom on the 24th of August. More information can be found on the Pokémon GO website