Location Based Websites.
Location based applications are great. I’m a huge fan. The idea of connecting physical action to online communication speaks to me both as someone whose personal life is immersed in digital, and as a marketer who spends a significant chunk of every day looking for new and innovative ways to facilitate connecting with people through digital technologies.
[This may be why my job title is ‘Digital Facilitator’. Alternately, it could have nothing to do with it.]
I’ve been thinking about the Nintendo DS launch, lately. Not the slim sexy version of a few years back, or the DSi with cameras built in, or the upcoming 3DS (aka virtual boy 2.0), but the initial silver, oversized, somewhat awkward DS. I bought one the first week it was available, because I 1) trusted nintendo to do something interesting, and 2) was excited about the potential of a touch screen as an input / control device.
It should not be surprising I own an iPhone and an iPad.
When the DS launched initially, Nintendo took advantage of it’s WiFi capabilities, creating demo games that could be downloaded only through specific locations (usually kiosks at gaming retailers, or on the convention floor). This is a different kind of location based messaging, essentially incentivizing one specific locale, rather than incentivizing the action of checking in at a location at all (i.e., the Foursquare model).
Why not build a mobile website that exists solely on a location specific WiFi hotspot? Create content relevant to the location, information that is most valuable there, and offers that are tailored to the geography, and audience.
And then leave it locked to that one wireless network.
I’d leave the network open to access other sites, after stopping at the key location based content, just because encouraging people to stay around a hotspot, and providing utility, doesn’t really have a downside.
But for all the talk of driving traffic in-store, LBM (in my mind) focuses on a different goal - adding a branded and interactive layer to existing behaviour. An LBW gives you a reason to visit, to stay, and to explore - as well as taking content to another level of specialization, and interaction.
Most importantly, it gives you something to talk about, an experience that requires more than loading an application to create. If the content, and the design, are effective enough, this is an experience worth introducing other people to.
Creating artificial scarcity is a meaningful way of creating experiential value. If you don’t believe me, research the diamond cartels.
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.
[found via Saul Colt :http://ow.ly/1Bc3m]
This is the kind of thing that fascinates me, blurring the border between the concept [Foursquare, really] and its physical application.
It doesn’t hurt that Nike does presentation as well as damn near anyone.
Notifications and Pattern Recognition.
I’m obsessed with narrative, so it’s unlikely anyone else thinks this way - but as location based social tools, and mobile status updates become more and more common, my sense of pattern recognition comes into play more and more often.
A simple example: a few weeks ago, a co-worker left the office for lunch. My phone vibrated twice while he was gone, with push notifications from Foursquare letting me know he checked in at a local indian restaurant, and then a high end local sandwich place. I wondered if the lineup had been too long at the first restaurant, or if he’d decided to pick up a sandwich because he was still hungry, etc.
It turned out that the sandwich shop sells excellent hot chocolate, something I was not aware of.
This is a silly little example, but thing about the tendency that will comes into play here - the human need to turn incomplete information into some kind of clear picture, something that supports our worldview, despite the lack of certainty inherent in these assumptions. When we aren’t around, we exist in the digital ephemera, tweets and posts and status updates and notifications. This collected information is always an incomplete picture, and yet it offers enough that assumptions are made. The next meaningful step in marketing might not be analysis and interpretation of this information, but instead hijacking the tendency to interpret, and using it to lead people toward assumptions that drive desired behaviour.
Imagine ‘renting’ the presence of a person online. Not sponsored tweets or posts, but acutally paying someone to ‘drive’ their established profiles, checking in at locations, mentioning behaviours (but not specific brands) and generally establishing the lifestyle and brand associations of potential customers, waiting for them to make the final connection to the product themselves. Would this work around government rules regarding disclosure? Would it be feasible for government regulators to prove otherwise?
This sound sinister, but it’s not much more than using game mechanics to drive behaviour (and a slight hint of the hyperreal). And because it’s based on incomplete intepretation, the argument can be made than anyone influenced is doing it to themselves. So do we worry about trusting each other, or about trusting ourselves to only identify valid patterns?
