Kodak
It might not be pretty on the eyes, or easy to carry around on a vacation, but what do you expect? It was the first digital camera Kodak ever made.
Yes, that’s right, the contraption pictured above was put together in Kodak’s Elmgrove Plant labs near Rochester, N.Y., during the winter of 1975.
A post on Kodak’s Web site from 2007, written by Steve Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera, explains exactly how this camera was created, from a mishmash of lenses and computer parts and an old Super 8 movie camera.
Mr. Sasson called it “film-less photography” and took a “year of piecing together a bunch of new technology” to create a digital camera that ran off “16 nickel-cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter.”
One of my favorite factoids about this snazzy digital camera is the fact that it took 23 seconds to record a single digital image to its cassette deck. To view the filmless photo, Mr. Sasson had to remove the cassette from the camera and place it in a customized reader that could display the image on an old black and white television.
When the team of technicians presented the camera to Kodak audiences they of course heard a barrage of curious questions:
Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV? How would you store these images? What does an electronic photo album look like? When would this type of approach be available to the consumer?
And although Mr. Sasson and his team tried to answer some of these questions, he concludes with the statement that the digital camera they created could “substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future.”
Kodak Side-by-side comparison of a printed photograph versus the “Film-less Photograph.”
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Guess we shouldn't be dismissive - particularly of ideas. From NYT: Kodak's 1975 Model Digital Cam
Location. Location. Location-Based Service. From BW: The Retailer's Clever Little Helper
The Retailer's Clever Little Helper
A wave of startups is using smartphones to bring e-commerce advantages to real-world stores
By Brad Stone and Barrett Sheridan
Starbucks mayors received $1 off frappuccinos in a deal that ran through mid-summer
The battle between online and brick-and-mortar retailers has, until now, been a lopsided fight. Internet stores enjoy the paradigm-busting advantages of the Web, like the ability to personalize deals to shoppers and offer on-the-spot price comparisons. Offline retailers, by contrast, may never know anything about a shopper who walks in, pays for a single item, and walks out the door.
Over the past year tech entrepreneurs have raced to correct this imbalance and extend digital efficiencies to the physical world. Internet services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah, and—as of Aug. 18—Facebook have enticed millions to digitally "check in" to real-world locations. These smartphone-centered services encourage anyone out on the town to open up an app when they enter a venue. By clicking a button, the phone's GPS registers a user's location and sends it out to selected friends. Along with the debatable social benefit of letting people constantly broadcast their whereabouts, the services are designed to give businesses the chance to tailor deals to patrons and forge enduring relationships with the otherwise unidentified folks who may be their best customers.
Until recently, big-box retailers and other mainstream businesses have largely sat on the sidelines as early adopters toyed with the technology. Now that Foursquare and Booyah have each signed up roughly 3 million people and Facebook's 500 million users now have access to similar, location-sensing technology, the big brands are coming around. Says Tristan Walker, vice-president of business development at Foursquare: "We see upwards of 500 to 1,000 new business inquiries a day." Many of those are from mom-and-pop stores, but Foursquare has also recently made deals with major retailers including Gap (GPS), Starbucks (SBUX), and Sephora.
For retailers, foot traffic is everything, says Cyriac Roeding, the CEO of Shopkick, a new service similar to Foursquare. In e-commerce, a small percentage of a website's visitors make a purchase. In physical retail, the proportion of people who walk into a store and actually buy something—known as the conversion rate—is much higher. Roeding says the conversion rate for fashion retailers is 20 percent; in electronics, it's 40 to 60 percent. Shopkick, which launched last week in 600 stores and 100 malls across the U.S., encourages users to visit its retail partners—including Best Buy (BBY), American Eagle (AEO), and Sports Authority—by rewarding them with gift certificates and other prizes after a certain number of check-ins.
For traditional businesses, one of the advantages of these new services is the ability to reach customers on the go. "We know that consumers are out there at four o'clock in the afternoon with no idea what they're going to have for dinner," says John Faulkner, the director of brand communications for Campbell Soup. "If we can communicate with them the way they want to be communicated with, we can get them thinking about our soup." Clay Cowan, vice-president of e-commerce and digital marketing at Sports Authority, says that these services are much more effective at targeting customers than traditional methods: "Rather than accuracy at the quarter mile, it's accuracy at the aisle."
Campbell's is working with Stickybits, part of another batch of startups distinct from check-in services like Foursquare and Shopkick but still pursuing the same goal of overlaying the Web onto the physical world. For Stickybits and its cohort, the bar code is the crucial ingredient—users don't just check into a store, they check into a product by scanning a UPC with the camera on their smartphones.
Intriguing point, interesting comments. Revealed: How Steve Jobs Turns Customers into Fanatics
Photo via powerbooktrance
Marketers gaze in envy at brands like Apple. The firm that began with the Mac has turned their customers into legions of fanatical evangelists. But, without a Steve Jobs at the helm, or with fewer resources than Apple, is building that kind of loyalty possible? I’ve got good news: while having a visionary and charismatic CEO is a big plus, it isn’t necessary to build a fan base, or even a fanatic base. One big secret of Apple’s success lies in an experiment conducted 40 years ago.
The Seminal Experiment
Psychologist Henri Tajfel wanted to know how seemingly normal people could commit genocide, and explored how easy or difficult it was to get subjects to identify with one group and discriminate against others. What he found was startling: with the most trivial of distinctions, he could create artificial loyalties to one group, who would then discriminate against those not in that group.
Tajfel tested subjects by having them perform a more or less meaningless task, like choosing between one of two painters or guessing a number of dots shown on a screen. Then, each subject was assigned to a group, ostensibly based on their answer. When the groups were formed and asked to distribute real rewards, they became loyal to their own group and were stingy with the other group. Many variations on this experiment have been performed subsequently, and they have shown that people can develop group loyalty very quickly even in the absence of real differences. Subjects even became emotionally invested in their meaningless groups, cheering for their own group’s rewards and mocking the other group
Tajfel’s experiment (published in Social categorization and intergroup behavior) led to the theory of social identity, which states that people have an inherent tendency to categorize themselves into groups. They then base their identity (in part) on their group affiliations, and build boundaries to keep other groups separate.
Us vs. Them
In neuromarketing terms, our brains are hardwired to WANT to be in one or more groups. Brands that can be positioned to put their customers into a group will find that their efforts will be enhanced by their customers’ own need to belong. In addition, they will likely cultivate a dislike for other brand groups.
Jumping back to Apple, look how they have leveraged an “Us. vs. Them” approach for decades. Their “1984″ commercial certainly drew a sharp distinction between the lone, attractive, athletic young woman and the lines of brainwashed drones.
A year later, Apple’s creepy and somewhat depressing “Lemmings” commercial continued to push people into one of two camps; they again portraying PC users as blindfolded businesspeople functioning like suicidal rodents following each other off a cliff.
Fast forwarding to today, look at the wildly popular Mac Guy vs. PC Guy ads. These in particular draw a sharp distinction – do you want to be one of the cool kids, or a dork?
Compare People, Not Products
Note the common characteristic of these, and many other, Apple commercials: they focus on the PEOPLE who use each product. These ads convey little or no actual product information, and instead mock PC users while portraying Apple users in a favorable way.
Certainly, other brands have successfully exploited this concept, both directly and indirectly. Could the surprising results that showed Coke-branded cola lit up people’s brains more than Pepsi (whether or not the beverage tasted was Coke or Pepsi) be a result of more people thinking of themselves as “a Coke person” vs. “a Pepsi person?” The famous “Pepsi Generation” campaign was all about Pepsi drinkers as a group, though in the long run Coke has held its leading position.
Car and truck makers haven’t worked the “us vs. them” angle very much in their ads, but their owner base has certainly picked up on the theme. Truck owners in particular seem to consider themselves part of groups, as shown by the ongoing animosity between Chevy people and Ford people, to say nothing of the clannish owners of HUMMERs.
Our Customers are Different/Better
While the “us vs. them” strategy works better when products are visible to others (cars, apparel, cigarettes, etc.) there is no reason why it couldn’t be employed by nearly any brand people feel at least a little attached to. It’s critical to make your customers feel different, and to interact with them in a way that makes that more credible than a passing ad slogan.
Godin and Tribes
Seth Godin echoes this thought, but states it in his own terms:
Brand management is so 1999.
Brand management was top down, internally focused, political and money based. It involved an MBA managing the brand, the ads, the shelf space, etc… Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world…
What people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about…
People form tribes with or without us. The challenge is to work for the tribe and make it something even better. [From Seth's Blog - Tribe Management.]
Do your customers feel like they are part of a group?
Have you been able to make your customers feel different than those of your competition? Does your brand have a tribe? Have you been able to define an “enemy” group that strengthens the cohesiveness of your own? Leave a comment. If I can, I’ll feature a success story or two in a subsequent post.
Related posts:
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Article: iPhone App Makes Barcode Scanning a Social Experience
http://mashable.com/2010/08/16/bakodo/(Sent from Flipboard)
What a waste of talent... Even as the audience craves it...Tears for Fears: labels won't back us
'Record companies won't invest in bands like us' ... Tears for Fears. Photograph: Virginia Turbett/redferns
Record labels refuse to "invest" in new material by Tears for Fears, according to Curt Smith. As the reformed 80s band lurch and creak into the 2010s, the group's co-founder claims they would be interested in making new records, but can't – and "not necessarily [by] choice".
"There really isn't a forum for people like us to make new music," Smith told Canada's QMI Agency. Almost 30 years after their formation, Tears for Fears continue to tour – visiting relative backwaters, opening for Spandau Ballet, reminding people of Gary Jules's Mad World cover. But according to Smith, it's circumstances that have forced them to become their own cover act. "People don't really buy records anymore, so record companies won't invest in bands like us," he said. "They want cookie-cutter acts. For us, making a record would be a money-losing proposition."
It doesn't help, Smith said, that he and band-mate Roland Orzabal are a little exhausted with each other. "We know our limitations," Smith explained. "There's only a certain amount of time that Roland and I really want to be on the same bus together. Our limit is about four to six weeks."
With Smith living in Los Angeles and Orzabal in England, they are instead making music via Twitter. Smith has recorded several songs using Twitter suggestions, MySpace research, YouTube auditions and emailed audio tracks. "It's actually a lot more gratifying [than working in a studio]," Smith said. "When you're in the studio, whether you call it a collaboration or not, you know whose record it is. So you're sitting there trying to please another party, with the artist or producer sitting behind you saying, 'I'm not sure about that bit.'"
Tears for Fears' most recent studio album, released independently in 2005, peaked at number 45.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Conceptually, sound idea...hmmm...Access, not ownership is the route to better products - Core77
Posted by Andy Polaine | 10 Aug 2010 | Comments (4)
I really don't want to own another laptop, mobile phone or TV ever again. In fact, as I look around my home, I realise there are quite a few products that I feel the same way about, especially in the world of consumer electronics. That's not to say I don't want to use the latest and greatest of these products, but I don't want to buy and own more future landfill.
Like many, I wouldn't mind trading up my iPhone 3GS for the new iPhone 4. The thing that stops me is not just the price or being shackled to a rubbish telco contract for another two years. What stops me is that I really don't want my existing iPhone to just end up in a drawer. Sure, I could resell it on eBay only for it to end up in somebody else's drawer one day. Actually I'm very happy with my existing 3GS, but with a new daughter in the family, I'd like to shoot some higher quality video of her growing up. Instead of buying yet another gadget in the form of a video camera the iPhone 4 would do the job. I really just want to trade the old one in and have access to the new one until the next new one comes along. I don't need to own it forever.
Inspired by Ben Reason's "not more products, please" plea I have been running some service design workshops in recent weeks with the theme Access Not Ownership. Or, as John Thackara labels it in his book In The Bubble, Use, Not Own. In the workshops most people see the sense of saved resources by not having to own everything they use, but most also stumble onto the same issue - people often don't like to share, but there are plenty of models of this working and leading to better products and services as a result.
The easiest use-not-own approach is similar to leasing, but rather than pay a monthly fee to the telco for the financing of my iPhone, for example, I'd prefer to pay a monthly fee to Apple for access to the devices of my choice. When new versions come out, I would have the choice to pay a lower monthly fee to keep using my 'old' technology or keep paying the same and swap my laptop/iPhone/iPad out for the new model. Like broadband or cable TV, as time progressed the fee remains the same but the offering improves.
This is one approach to creating a product-service ecology and elements of this which already exist - mobile phones, car leasing, vegetable box deliveries, renting a TV or washing machine. The downside of leasing is that at some point the product will most probably end up in the landfill or, if we're lucky, parts of it will be recycled or downcycled.
One big difference with a use-not-own ecology is that it can be a closed loop of manufacture and recycling. When manufacturers are responsible for the recycling there is a built in incentive for them to make products as easy and efficient to recycle as possible. In the monthly fee model, the issue of defective products is squarely with the manufacturer. They still own it and there is an incentive to make products that are built to last longer or easy to service. Longer lasting products mean that those who are happy keep their products longer and pay a lower fee provide an income stream that is otherwise lost by selling a product outright for a one-time fee.
This isn't a new model, of course. Up until relatively recently it was common for telcos to own the hardware of the telephone. There are still plenty of people paying rental for old landline telephones, some of which haven't been used for years. This model used to exist because the products were too expensive or too 'technical' to own or they provided an additional revenue stream. They were part of the service provided. Cheaper and cheaper production techniques kill this model but produce massive waste in terms of 'disposable' products.
In the workshops I ran, participants often started by making a list of things they would and would not share. After some initial resistance to the idea of sharing, most people realise that they would actually be prepared to share quite a lot of the products they own. The exceptions, it seems, are underwear and toothbrushes. Yet clothing is an untapped sharing area that is quite culturally and gender determined. More women seem to be happy to share clothes with friends than men, yet women tend to buy their wedding dresses, which are worn once only, while men most often hire their tuxedo for the occasion. At the same time more women appear to buy and sell clothes on eBay than men.
But sharing is different from having access to something. Sharing implies owning something first and then sharing it with others. Access can mean that a company or community own something rather than an individual, but that individuals can use it. It's still sharing, but it doesn't feel like you are using other people's stuff.
Workshop participants are then challenged to come up with an access model of things they normally own and at the same time think of a way to create a great customer experience that would offset the downside of not owning the products. What soon transpires is that the access model can allow people to use products that are normally way out of their price range, such as designer clothing. It can also provide a level of variety that ownership cannot, such as a different car every week.
Ben Reason's critique of The Big Rethink was that it really didn't amount to much of a rethink:
"Products sold in markets seemed to be the model for most of the case studies - they may be great products, green products or category redefining products but they are still things made, shipped and consumed in the way that, as we heard from Steve Evans of Cranfield, is unsustainable and clearly does not answer the big challenges. As Hugo Spowers (Riversimple) said 'less unsustainable is still unsustainable.'"He goes on to describe Riversimple's business model:
"[O]nly through a 'sale of service' (the car will be charged for by the mile with fuel included) could a car manufacturer build incentives into the business to reduce its environmental impact with zero as a goal. [Riversimple's] model is to make higher margins from a more expensive car by providing it as a service to users for longer than the first five-year span that traditional manufacturers are interested in."Again, there are plenty of existing models where this works very well for all involved. In an earlier student incarnation, I studied film and video and I remember the incredibly high build quality of Arriflex cameras. They were also unaffordable for the private individual and most production companies rent them, not only saving themselves the cost of large assets that are only used sporadically, but also saving on maintenance and insurance. The cameras and other equipment are not only built to be high quality products to use, but also built to withstand being rented out over and over and be thrown around on hasty film sets and in the back of vans. It's a world away from the flimsy plastic junk most of us end up with as consumer cameras.
Designing products to be part of an entire service-product access-not-ownership system has benefits all around. Designers can focus on designing the best product with the highest build quality possible, manufacturers enter into a longer term relationship with consumers and consumers get to use high-end products. Access, not ownership also means less use of resources and less consumer junk stowed in drawers for a few months on the way to the landfill.
(Photo credit: James Jeffrey)
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Saturday, August 07, 2010
Codes in the Cloud? MSKYNET Raises $550K For Advanced 2D Barcodes
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/z6HD6Dx7SVU/ Shared via Pulse
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Thursday, August 05, 2010
McKinsey Quarterly article: Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
This pic does paint a thousand words. From Neatorama: The Past, The Present, and The Future of Media?
One SFist reader wondered about the symbolism of the empty seat.
Without missing a beat, Keeling cleverly replied: "The empty seat is reserved for web 4.0."
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Who says you can't learn from watching Iron Man? Fandango Iron Man 2 mobile video ads exceed 6% CTR
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Fandango Iron Man 2 mobile video ads exceed 6 percent CTR
By Dan Butcher
June 1, 2010
Fandango taps iVdopia for its commerce-enabled mobile video ad camapaign
The average click-through rate of movie-ticketing giant Fandango’s commerce-enabled Iron Man 2 mobile video ads surpassed 6 percent—more than eight times as effective as the average PC Internet video ad.
Fandango’s marketing goal was to drive movie ticket sales for Iron Man 2 Movie. Fandango wanted to target their main demographic of movie-goers and action lovers, so the company chose to place ads powered by iVdopia within movie, entertainment/gaming and sports applications.
“What we are seeing in the market is a tremendous demand for mobile video ads from pretty much every brand in the market,” said Chhavi Upadhyay, cofounder and chief operating officer of Vdopia Inc., San Francisco. “The announcement of iAds actually increased the demand for mobile rich-media and video advertising—brands now think of the iPhone as a mainstream marketing medium and they are putting more budget into mobile.
“Mobile video ads are really picking up now,” she said. “Because of the general response from the market to mobile video, [studies predict that] 44 percent of mobile spend will happen in mobile video going forward,” she said.
“More brands are entering the mobile advertising space, as they are seeing it as a mainstream medium.”
Fandango's Iron Man 2 mobile video ad campaign ran during the nine days leading up to the movie premiere
By the beginning of this year, Fandango had already rolled out a mobile Web site and applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, Google’s Android, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS (see story).
In February, Fandango tapped mobile ad network Apptera to develop and operate 1-800-Fandango, an interactive voice recognition movie show time and mobile ticketing service (see story).
In March, Fandango debuted a mobile ticketing program where consumers can get movie tickets sent as bar codes to their mobile devices (see story).
Click to buy tickets now
Vdopia’s iVdopia is a mobile ad network and platform specializing in mobile video and rich media. It has direct relationships with application developers for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android platforms.
Fandango taps mobile video to drive sales
Fandango provided iVdopia with a Flash creative with a countdown of days left until the movie’s premiere.IVdopia helped convert the Flash creative into a video advertisement and executed the countdown with different video creative each day from April 29 to May 7.
The mobile video ads appeared in a variety of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, including Skyworks’ Goaaal! Lite, Arcade Hoops Basketball Lite, Field Goal Frenzy Lite, Arcade Bowling Lite, 3 Point Hoops Basketball Lite and World Cup Air Hockey Lite.
Other applications wherein the ads appeared include Redwind Software’s Movie Challenge Lite, iBowl Classic, iBaseball, iBasketball and Recreational Gaming LLC’s iOdds.
The mobile video ad creative had a clear call-to-action asking consumers to buy tickets that resulted it in 6.17 percent of users clicking on the “Buy Tickets” icon.
On average, more than 25 percent of users who click on an iVdopia mobile video ad also do a post-click action.
Fandango received more than 50,000 actions on the custom Iron Man 2 Talk2Me page created by iVdopia.
Around 25,000 users clicked on the “Buy Tickets” icon and more than 11,800 users viewed the trailer for the Iron Man 2 movie.
More than 5,800 consumers click to download the Fandango application, while another 7,800 clicked to view Iron Man 2 showtimes.
Forty-nine percent of users who clicked on the ad decided to buy tickets now, while 23 percent viewed the trailer, 16 percent searched showtimes and 12 percent downloaded the application.
In total, the mobile video campaign generated 817,495 impressions and 50,410 clicks through iVdopia’s Talk2Me actions in nine days.
“This high performance makes iVdopia Talk2Me ads suitable not only for branding campaigns, but also their effectiveness makes them very apt for performance and conversion campaigns as well,” Ms. Upadhyay said. “We are seeing all sorts of mobile campaigns, branding campaigns as well as performance campaigns with mobile video, either CPC or CPA.
“Those kinds of campaigns also coming up heavily with mobile video ads, as their performance is very, very high, so it makes sense for people looking for conversions and performance-based ads,” she said.
“It makes sense for them to advertise with video instead of banners, because they get competitive rates in terms of CPC and much better creative.”
Whether it is due to the novelty factor or the fact that there is less clutter on a mobile screen or other factors, mobile video advertising consistently takes wired Web video ads to the cleaners.
“Mobile ads for all of our campaigns have been more effective than Internet ads for a few reasons,” Ms. Upadhyay said. “Mobile video ads are still relatively new—when Internet ads first started, response rates were double what they are now, but people got used to it.
“In the case of the mobile experience, the screen is right in front of them wherever they are, and if they get interested, they can take an action immediately, which is probably why the performance of all of these mobile campaigns have been phenomenal,” she said.
--> -->Staff Reporter Dan Butcher covers content, carrier networks, manufacturers, and software and technology. Reach him at dan@mobilemarketer.com.
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Location. Location. Loyalty? From The NYT: Turning Consumer Loyalty Into a Cellphone Game
Instead of collecting paper cards and fumbling through wallets at the cash register, customers are increasingly using their cellphones to track their visits and purchases, and receive rewards.
Some start-ups, like CardStar and CardBank, store existing loyalty cards on cellphones with scannable barcodes. And companies including Motorola and a start-up called mFoundry are providing retailers with the technology to build cellphone loyalty cards.
Loopt is one of several start-ups — including Foursquare, Shopkick and Gowalla — that are experimenting with ways to use cellphones to bridge the digital and physical worlds and turn the tasks of everyday life, like buying coffee and running errands, into a game.
On Tuesday, Loopt, one of the first services to let people use cellphones to share their location with friends, is taking its concept a step further by introducing Loopt Star, a mobile game that rewards people for frequently checking in to particular places. People will compete to earn “achievements” and become “boss” of certain locations, and Gap, Burger King and Universal Music plan to use Loopt Star to reward loyal customers.
For retailers, these games and apps offer a new form of mobile marketing that goes well beyond a minibanner ad by rewarding consumers, individually, for their loyalty. And unlike paper cards, stores can use the data they collect from people’s cellphones to learn more about who their customers are and how they behave.
No one in advertising has ever been able to figure out how to do “one-to-one, real-time marketing,” said Drew Sievers, a former advertising executive who is now co-founder and chief executive of mFoundry. “The mobile phone is where that will actually probably happen. It’s the only thing connected and always with you.”
Loopt has offered search or banner ads on its mobile apps, but advertisers told the company that instead, they wanted a mobile loyalty card, said Sam Altman, Loopt’s co-founder and chief executive.
“Instead of advertising with a banner, it’s offering users incentives for good behavior,” he said. “They’re trying to turn existing customers into better ones.”
Loopt Star is Loopt’s effort to play catch-up with some of these other services, particularly with Foursquare. Loopt, which started in 2005, was one of the first companies to popularize broadcasting one’s whereabouts to friends. But Foursquare, founded last year, is a popular newcomer. It turned location-sharing into a game with its badges, mayorships and rewards, and into a marketing tool for businesses, including Tasti D-lite and Pepsi, to track and reward loyal customers.
Loopt has 3.4 million registered users to Foursquare’s 1.4 million users. But Foursquare’s gaming elements are quickly attracting new users. Mr. Altman said Loopt built Loopt Star in response, and last year acquired a start-up called GraffitiGeo that builds similar games.
“We respectfully just sort of knocked off those gaming elements, but added new things,” he said.
People register for Loopt Star using their Facebook log-ins, so they can share their location and compete in the game with their Facebook friends and alert their friends about recent purchases and special deals.
Retailers can choose which actions they want to reward and what the prizes will be. Gap is sending customers a 25 percent discount coupon after they check in twice to a Gap store. Burger King is offering a soda with a sandwich or a coffee with a breakfast sandwich to people who check in three times. Universal Music will send five free songs to people who check into any bar along with two friends.
Stanford University is using Loopt Star over graduation weekend. When students check in to at least two of the official school events, they will get a prize. Once they have left Stanford, they will be able to use Loopt to find fellow alumni, said Ian Hsu, Stanford’s director of Internet media outreach.
Starbucks will use Loopt Star to give frequent customers an honorary barista badge, symbolized by a green apron. Starbucks also offers a barista badge on Foursquare, where people compete to become “mayors” of places, and the coffee chain is giving mayors $1 off Frappuccinos.
Starbucks has its own iPhone loyalty card, built by mFoundry. Customers collect stars in a cup on their phones every time they make a purchase and get a free drink every 15 visits.
Starbucks could use the data from the cellphones to send personalized offers, like a chai Frappuccino coupon in the afternoon to people who drink chai lattes in the morning, said Brady Brewer, vice president at Starbucks overseeing brand loyalty and the Starbucks card.
“We’ve tried to build a program around recognition — knowing who you are and what you like — and in some ways, that relevance comes from knowing about purchases from data” collected from the loyalty program, he said.
Shopkick is creating a program, expected to begin later this year, that will reward people for showing up and spending money at any of the partner stores, which include American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy and Macy’s.
Cyriac Roeding, Shopkick’s co-founder and chief executive, says these types of mobile apps are a counterweight to comparison-shopping apps, like RedLaser, that drive people to other stores. “You have to find new ways to keep your customers engaged and bring them back, because you know there are apps that drive them out of the store instead of into it,” he said.
Another competitor, Gowalla, is getting traction. InterContinental Hotels Group is using Gowalla to give gift cards and airline miles to loyal customers of its hotels, and the New Jersey Nets gave prizes like jerseys and tickets to fans who checked into the arena or sports bars to watch games.
Tristan Walker, head of business development at Foursquare, said, “Everybody will be doing similar things in the future, but we hope to really build compelling solutions and innovate in ways that other people aren’t.” Businesses “see Foursquare as their new digital loyalty card of choice,” he added.
Most users will eventually choose one service, because they are unlikely to pull out their cellphones and check in using multiple services each time they arrive at a destination. And many other people are uncomfortable publicly sharing their location at all.
Mr. Altman is convinced that they will change their minds if they are rewarded for their patronage. “People are getting more comfortable so fast,” he said. “They see the upside is huge — run-ins with friends and cool specials.”
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