Foursquare

Games, mobile and random dominated this week with some excellent new breakthrough work.  If you want to know whats hot and by exemption whats not then look no further than this weeks most popular stories on ADZAG;

1. Dominos Embraces Gamification With ‘Behind The Pizza’ > Making ingredients sexy again! Game based education platform from Dominos.
2. Bring Back A Classic Volkswagen With VW’s Fanwagen > VW’s Fanwagen campaign continues to turn heads in what is a well executed promotion.
3. Protect Your Identity Online With Verisure > Humorous mobile campaign built to raise awareness of your online identity and ensuring its safe and secure from random Facebook photos!
4. ASICS Want To Know If You Can Run Faster Than Advertising > U.S. marathoner Ryan Hall who boasts a 6-foot-10 stride length and 4:46 mile pace, this instillation lets you see if you can keep up!
5. The Power Of Foursquare: 7 Innovations For Business > Foursquares still kicking and so are these 7 innovations for business.

To help launch Carmine Gallo’s new book, The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are, a teaser presentation has made its way onto Slideshare.  In terms of the platform, there are certainly some critics out there and to be fair they do have a point, Foursquare hasn’t quite nailed it, but no one will argue that location is becoming an increasingly important marketing consideration and Foursquare is very well positioned to lead that trend.  In the presentation Carmine will take you briefly through the 7 innovations that have been identified and that conveniently spell CHECK-IN!  Not convinced?  Chat to Google about their big bet on LoMoSo.

What a week, its passed in a blur of ideas, innovation and a few pints of ale but its all been worth it.  This week we’ve seen some truly progressive thinking hit the market combined with a little bit of fun around a cultural phenomenen.  The ADZAG Facebook page is going great guns, but we still want more love so please like us here for daily ideas that challenge the status quo! Right, here’s our round-up of the best of the week incase you missed anything;

• An amazing Google Wallet hype video surfaced online.
• Fouresquaropoly, a mash-up of Foursquare and Monopoly hit the headlines, currently in development and looking fantastic.
• The weird and wacky CLOO, a community loo application appeared.
• The Angry Birds continue their world domination with a guide to sex!
• Saatchi’s Stockholm made laundry detergent interesting.
• Lovers of a long holiday can make money through their out of office email.
• Philips demonstrated their obsession with sound through this innovative musical experience.
• Toyota believe a simple glass of water can help us all drive better.
• Outdoor went viral with this bacteria based poster, gross!

Everyone that remembers their childhood can probably recall seeing or experiencing peer pressure around smoking.  In fact, behavioural analysis highlights it as one of the key influencing factors on why people start smoking.  Taking that insight and flipping it on its head, students at the The Miami Ad School have created a mobile app that creates positive peer pressure for smokers to quit.  Built around a smokers social circle (non-smokers) the app experience begins by asking friends to make a financial commitment and defining a quit date.  If the smoker agrees then the app ensures there is support and constant encouragement,  help when tempting situations appear and an ongoing social tracker of progress.  If the smoker quits successfully then all the friends get their money back, if not then its donated to the Cancer Society!

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Social obsessive compulsive?  Addicted to Foursquare and Facebook?  Constantly plugged into twitter for fear of missing out?  You might very well need a social media detox!  Scarily accurate cartoon-o-graphic on the perils, behaviours and consequences of social media addiction.

Unfortunately for me I read down to symptom 6 , realised I hadn’t checked-in and…well you all know what I did!

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And so the week of August 8th comes to an end. Its been a busy week for AdZag. We’ve been scouring the globe to bring you some of the best ideas in media, communication and technology and there have been some stonkers. So here’s our round-up of the best of the week incase you missed anything;

• Adidas Japan discovered their new AdiZero runners had the ability to expose women’s underwear.
• Euro RSCG Brussels stole the mayorships of 42 rival agencies.
• Betfair decided to place QR codes on the British Volley Ball teams bottoms.
• Ever heard the phrase ‘I owe you a beer’?  Well Heineken makes sure you turn those promises into pints.
• Frijj, the milk based beverage brand tests you self control with ‘You LOL You Lose‘

Ever heard the phrase ‘I owe you a beer’ but never actually received the amber nectar at the end of that promise. Fear not, two Miami ad school students, Otilia Dobrea and Glen Hansen, have devised this ingenious little app called Heineken BFF (Beer For Friends) that combines Facebook, Foursquare and a payment system to ensure those beer promises are kept.

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I was wondering when a brand or business was going to employ some guerilla marketing tactics on Foursquare and it looks like the team at Euro RSCG Brussels are the ones to do it.  To raise their profile as a digital player and drive recruitment the guys at Euro began a check-in frenzy at rival agencies in an attempt to steal the mayorship.  It seems many of their competitors were none the wiser and Euro managed to become the Mayor of 42 agencies around the city.  Pretty embarrassing for their competitors, pretty cool if you are Euro RSCG!

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I believe so, at least in some parts of the social landscape.

To be more specific I believe we have reached a tipping point in regards to the number of social networking platforms that the market can sustain and we are likely to see some major changes over the next 12 months in the form of consolidation, aggregation and expiration!

If we look at the choice an individual has to connect with others we start to build a very cluttered and complex picture of the social ecosystem. One that just isn’t sustainable in the long term. I’ve broken the choices available down into 5 categories;

General Networks: Myspace, Bebo, Orkut, Friendster, hi5 and the mighty Facebook all operate in the general space providing people with the framework to connect around anything and everything.

Professional Networks: Xing and LinkedIn dominate however there are many smaller players such as Ryze, UpSpring, Ecademy and Ziggs that focus on this specific but valuable business centered social space.

Pausing quickly, if you think about the above two categories it requires your average person to maintain two profiles online, a face for business and a face for pleasure. Keeping these two elements of your life separate is an increasingly difficult task in today’s hyper connected world but the majority of the population still function in this way. Personally I believe in creating a single transferable persona but this isn’t the way we have lived as a society up until now so that transition is taking time.

Live Networks: Created and dominated by twitter live networks require an even greater commitment by the individual to maximize their personal branding opportunity through consistent and frequent updates.

Foursquare is one of the fastest growing social platforms worldwide.  As it moves from early adopter status to early mainstream many businesses, especially those in retail and services have started to think about how they can leverage its concept.  The most obvious feature is that of Mayors.  The majority of business’s listed in Foursquare will have a Mayor (the individual that checks in most frequently), and that Mayor represents something that is very valuable to any business, loyalty.  In fact Starbucks is currently trialing a reward program where the Mayor of each of its coffee shops receives a special offer thanking them for their custom and loyalty.

The problem is that many businesses will have at least one tech savvy employee that has been checking in to there place of work everyday for the last 6 months.  What does this mean?  Well it means you won’t be able to reward your actual customers, as one of the most frequent visitors (a staff member) has the Mayor-ship locked up!

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