Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

I had just read this article about marketers not sure how to take advantage of Location-Based Services, specifically ones that are Social-Network based, and one of our Account people popped their head in my office to ask “What’s up with FourSquare? Is it worthwhile? And is it significant for Marketers?”

Good questions all. Foursquare allows you to “check in” to locations and awards badges for different user activities. The Article correctly states that some restaurants and bars are already embracing it, but the activities and offers are still in early days. Note the offer from Wow Bao in my building below:

Yeah – it’s a freebie offer, but I find it interesting that there is such a conversation about “is this interesting for marketers” and “how will marketers use it” – since it should make sense to pay attention to if you’ve got at least some of your audience that uses these kinds of things, and you’re worth having a relationship with in the first place (which, granted, is a big question for some marketers).

Here’s why: think about why restaurants and bars already jumped on the bandwagon. They have to develop relationships with their customers – they don’t have a choice. They don’t have a retailer that will put up POS material, or vast amounts of online ad spend (generally), and most of the places I’ve seen don’t do TV. For them, the relationship with the person in that establishment is everything, and finding new ways to prolong and enrich that relationship is the key to their success. For them the only question would be “why would I not get involved?”

Now I’m looking back over the last 12 months and thinking about the times I’ve mentioned doing something like this for a marketer, and thinking “You know what? My Client needs to break out from the shelf, their target is pretty well-connected digitally, they are not always getting the POS attention they want, or always deserve, they want more engagement, and since their relationship with the consumer is everything for them as well … so Why not?”

Bonus topic for further conversation: How different would the strategy for the marketer be from what they use for Facebook and Twitter?

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Genius product placement…

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Keiichi Matsuda  is studying for his Masters in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. He is a member of Nic Clear’s Unit 15, who use film, animation and motion graphics to generate, develop and represent new architectural and spatial possibilities. He has created this awesome video “as part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality”.

It is very interesting to see how architecture goes together with new media types. via

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Brands take note: like we told you months ago: it really is time to stop with the dancing flashmobs.

“It’s difficult to know where to start with this film for Dr Pepper’s, but sometimes things are so bad, they are worth sharing, so here you are. But really, please stop flashmobbing, right now.”

In Creative Review

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If you don’t have the time to read the book, Richard Florida on his theory of Creative Economic Revolution.

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Leave it to the french to make a safe sex film…

by French director, Yoann Lemoine.

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This is not new, but I just found this interesting lecture by Henry Jenkins of MIT on the convergence of media, media culture etc. What I find so refreshing about it is that it is, in fact, a bit more academic. That might sound weird, but with all the hype around connections planning and discussion about its future difference to experience planning, media planning and brand planning, and our industry’s tendency to create buzz words and self-congratulatory one-liners, it is nice to have an MIT professor take a crack at it.

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While there have been some interesting AR cases in the last year or so, it still felt like playing around with a new technology for technology’s sake. What is much more interesting in the future when it comes to AR and marketing applications, is when the product becomes the interface for more complex interactions as well - as opposed to an extension of traditional storytelling.

Adidas recently announced that it would create sneakers with embedded AR codes which would turn your shoe into a game controller. This holds the potential of adding more dimensionality to AR and brand experience than most of the stuff I’ve seen so far. We’ll see how well it’s done.

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Pringles, a scottish maker of sweaters tries a different route: animated story telling. I like the simplicity and honesty of this approach. Sometimes a story is more effective than a reason to believe.

Via Daniel Bevis

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