Foursquare Launches First Advertising Campaign

Foursquare launched its first outdoor advertising campaign yesterday in hopes of educating non-users that the mobile application is more of a personalized local search and no longer a check-in service.  The main purpose of this campaign is to drive awareness of the new Foursquare.  A couple months ago, Foursquare splits its core business into two applications - Swarm, the application where users can check in to places and see where their friends are, and Foursquare, the application to discover new places.

This six-week campaign will appear in bus stops, train stations, and phone kiosks in Chicago and New York, and at bike share stations in Chicago.  The company was not allowed to advertise at bike share locations in New York because Citibank is the program's exclusive sponsor.  This is the company's first advertising campaign in an attempt to simultaneously rebrand Foursquare and jumpstart stagnant user growth.

Foursquare decided to launch this outdoor campaign after Seamless and Venmo reported that their outdoor campaigns were successful in driving app downloads. Foursquare COO Jeff Glueck said the company hopes the ads will display how Foursquare can be used by anyone. Each ad has two people with contrasting tastes having an encounter, Glueck said.

As an avid Foursquare user, it will be interesting to see the results of this branding campaign.  I am probably one of the top users of Swarm out of my entire community.  However, I mainly use Swarm to check in to places and rarely use the search function to find localized places.  I personally wouldn't use the Foursquare application so it will be interesting to see how the NYC/Chicago community responds to these outdoor advertisements, and whether the campaign will be successful.

Source: http://digiday.com/platforms/check-foursquares-first-advertising-campaign/ 

Cupcake Unicorns and a little company called Coca-Cola

Being consistently ranked as one of the most valuable and recognized brands in the world is no mean feat and when your product is sold in over 200 countries worldwide, it definitely makes sense for the company to invest highly in digital media so as to capture the biggest audience with a fraction of the cost it would take to market on-ground. 

Here are some of the recent marketing campaigns by Coke. Their messaging has always revolved around “sharing” and by making their softdrink share worthy on ground, they have made their campaigns share worthy online. 

1) A video that is naturally close to my heart given my Indian roots is the Happiness without Borders Video. An uplifting Coca-Cola film shows that what unites us is stronger than what sets us apart. High-tech vending machines installed in two popular shopping malls in Lahore, Pakistan and New Delhi, India – two cities separated by only 325 miles, but seemingly worlds apart due to decades of political tension – invited consumers to put their differences aside and share a simple moment over a Coke. 

2) Coke Can lets you twist and share 

3) Share-A-Coke campaign in Britain 

4) Recently Coke came up with a clever new way for students in Colombia to make friends. With the help of Leo Burnett, they designed a bottle called “The Friendly Twist” that can only be opened with the help of another person. Apart from an interesting mental challenge, the design also helped students to socialize without them even realizing it was happening. Watch the friendly twist campus bottles video here. 

Lastly check out Coke’s new digital marketing campaign: featuring 61 websites starting from ahh.com, that are focussed on engaging teens but clearly have a wide appeal. Note: these websites are highly addictive, my favourite is the cupcake unicorn!

While these campaigns may not always lead to a purchase it definitely creates a positive impression in the mind of consumers and the next time one wants to buy a softdrink, all things being equal, you’re more likely to opt for a Coke. 

Viral Marketing, the new marketing

Viral Marketing is used by companies to spread through the internet information or commercials about their products or services. Viral Marketing can be delivered through many channels: text message, e-books, blogs twitter, web pages  and video clips. This type of strategy is aimed to individuals with high social networking potential. This helps to spread the mouth very quickly with a minimum cost.

Additionally, people pay more attention and rely more in the opinion of their friends, so viral marketing has a greater impact in the behavior of people.

The increase of social networks these last years has led marketers to adopt viral marketing in each campaign.

But what do you need to be successful in this new marketing?

First, we need a creative campaign, a good story. This will allow marketers to catch the attention of the people and increase the popularity through the recommendation of friends. Viral Marketing generally takes advantage of common behaviors and motivations, to encourage others to share their commercials.

Second, it must to be easy to transfer this information to other people. Fortunately, the development of social network has been crucial to allow Companies to use Viral Marketing.

Finally, we should avoid misinterpretations in the messages.  This can ruin the reputation of a company in a few days, as it is impossible to control the information available in the internet.

Marketers always have to pay attention at the reaction of the public at the beginning of a marketing campaign in order to react as quickly as possible and avoid bad comments to spread in the web.

Lourdes Peirano