Meet the Mayor of Momofuku Milk Bar: Zagat just started a series of interviews with mayors of their recommended foursquare venues. First up is Nathan Archambault from one of our favorite places: Momofuku Milk Bar (Umm, did you just say ‘cornflake-marshmallow-chocochip cookie’?). We love this idea and can’t wait for more in the series!
This is a stunning example of good social marketing. Expanding the perceived value of Forusquare use / mayorship, without making any shifts to the platform itself.
Zagat gets to seem both plugged in, and interested in the people that make venues interesting. Foursquare gets to seem connected, being tied to both Zagat and the venue in question, as well as recognizing their users (which are the true value of the service). And Momofuku Milk Bar, already benefiting from the PR, gets humanized as well.
But by far, the greatest part of this piece is that is doesn’t put any of the three brands involved in the spotlight. This is about Nathan Archambault, and his story, which (from this angle) inherently involves three brands, and positive associations with all of them.
Foursquare ties human social interaction to physical locations through a digital framework. And clearly, whoever put this campaign together actually understands what that means.
Do business who operate with traditional loyalty cards (air miles, in-store card, etc) have this sort of dashboard? Would be interesting to compare side-by-side.
Or is the comparison nothing vs this?
If you have information like this, you should be able to leverage the hell out of your existing customer base. Genius.
Have you seen this video? It’s from a subway station in Stockholm, Sweden where some designers were trying to create an incentive for people to skip the escalator and take the stairs. Their solution was to turn the steps into a piano where each step would generating a different musical note - basically creating a way to make the taking the stairs more fun than taking the escalator. And it worked.
I feel like this is also what we’re trying to do at foursquare - how do you make exploring cities / meeting up with friends / finding new places more fun?
Last week we announced a partnership with San Francisco’s BART (the mass transit system) that let’s foursquare users earn badges for riding public transportation, unlock tips about the interesting coffee shops, music stores, etc you can find near BART stations and even win free train tickets on BART trains for checking-in.
… and just like the piano steps that make taking the stairs more fun than taking the escalator, we’re trying to make taking public transport more fun than being stuck in highway traffic. :)
We’re loving this and hopes it foreshadows the types of things we’re thinking about and the types of experiences we’re planning on creating.
Official press release from BART: http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20091022.aspx
We need to focus on coming up with better ways to drive behaviour than ‘because you should.’ This is a start.
