This summer I downloaded the Foursquare application on my iPhone. In case you’re not familiar with the app, Foursquare is a location-based social networking website. It allows you to check in at your physical location and it finds specials and places of interest near you. The poor college student part of me was immediately obsessed with Foursquare. During work, I would check in at bars near my office so by 5 o’clock I could get a free drink rewarding my 5th check-in or whatever. But the implications of Foursquare and similar applications are even cooler. Location-based services (LBS) represent, in my opinion, the future of how society interacts with technology. First the internet connected people with content. Then social networks connected people with people. The recent creation of Google’s Plus One, where the searcher sees friends’ valuation of sites in their search results, indicates that web content is becoming increasingly relevant to the user. Now LBS have funneled our entire treasury of knowledge- aka the internet- to the most fundamental point of relevancy: physical location.
Advertisements are a facet of delivering content to people. In this case, the content is a product or service and the people are consumers. Advertising in the past can be compared to the unfiltered internet. The ads aimed to serve as many impressions as possible, would hopefully be included in a few consumers’ consideration sets, and would maybe lead to a purchase. Like the internet circa 1996, old advertising was very limited in its degree of relevancy to any specific consumer. Then came cookies, which could actually track the web-user’s interests and habits. “But how do facebook sidebar ads know I’m a student in Winston-Salem and like Gossip Girl?” Cookies. Like a search engine, cookies filter the entire web for the targeted consumers. If that didn’t seem crazy enough, consider this: Location-based advertising. Now we get ads pertinent to our interests and location.
To me, LBS and location-based advertising seemed like a natural step towards advertising’s intent to hone in on their target. My true applause goes to the extraordinarily innovative ways marketers and agencies have utilized LBS to promote a product. I think these 3 ads really have a modern cool-factor because they capitalize on consumer location and allow the consumer to interact more with the brand:
1. Bing: Decode Jay-Z by Droga 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNic4wf8AYg
Using LBS to promote a LBS- AWESOME. Printing the words of Jay-Z’s life on the pages of his city- AWESOME.
Life is starting to get really easy. Maybe in’12 that chair I took a picture of will actually materialize instantly in my living room.
3. MINI Getaway Stockholm 2010 by Jung von Matt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9OlGq3gWUThis leverages a game to make people talk and gain brand recognition, but really exemplifies the power of LBS. The Swedes explain how the game objective of geo-tracking one another to find this virtual car united and created a conversation for their city. The great part for MINI is that their brand and product produced this effect. That type of thing really resonates in the minds and hearts of people.
Emily McGraw is a BEM major with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Art History at Wake Forest University
a great blog. especially love the links. thanks for sharing.
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