Barely Concealed Narcissism

In April I wrote a post for this blog about the value of location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. I suggested that those who deride LBS’s hold their criticism for a bit and look for the value. At the time, I wrote of “LBS’s” as one single entity because that’s just what they seemed to be – at least in the eyes of marketers: “let’s use check-ins to market our product, event, or venue.” But once you’ve made that jump, where do you go from there?

Last week’s unfittingly named MITX event “To Check In or Not To Check In?” provided some insight as it featured representatives from three location based services working their way through the LBS ecosystem. I say the event wasn’t properly named only because the question being answered wasn’t “should I check in?” or even “should I use an LBS as a marketer?” Rather, the discussion focused on which services were best and how to leverage them effectively.

The panelists themselves were informative, and Allen & Gerritsen’s Mike Schneider did a good job directing the conversation (though, with the exception of Yelp’s Leighann Farrelly, everyone was tweeting while sitting on stage – rather distracting). Perhaps the most poignant thing said, however, came from an audience member (whose name I do not remember, unfortunately). The discussion was revolving around how venues or brands can use an LBS to engage their consumer base when this gentleman pointed out that “nothing beats face to face engagement.” Seems rather obvious. But then again, here we were, talking about how to leverage digital visitors to real stores.

Phil Thomas DiGiulio from Pegshot noted that every brand has a story to tell, and telling that story is what brings brands and venues face to face with customers. But I’d argue that the beauty behind the location based service is that it provides the complete opposite: now consumers can tell the story the way they see it. Here’s another way we can start to build brand advocates or tap into the insight our consumers are providing.

At the beginning of the session I tweeted, saying that I had yet to see any sort of true differentiation between most location based services. But by the end, there were obvious stand outs: Pegshot lets users tell their story via photos, Yelp lets users tell their story via text reviews, and – as Mike pointed out – Foursquare lets marketers decide how consumers will tell their story via the API (I’m sorry to say, but the fourth panelist, Wayne Sutton from TriOut, has yet to convince me of its unique value).

Afterwards, I approached Pegshot’s Phil (who, it turns out, is a die hard Philly sports fan – win!). I told him that I’m taking my iPhone out when I walk into the restaurant, but I’m only going to open one– maybe two apps. How does he make sure one of them is his? He responded that they need to have a good answer for that question, but that he hoped his user experience trumped what others could do. We’ll see. I really like Pegshot, so I hope he wins.

In the months since my first LBS blog post, I’ve slowed my Foursquare use significantly. I still use it at venues where mayorship may provide value (discounts at Starbucks and WholeFoods). But for the most part, I’ve turned to other services (Whrrl, Foodspotting, Pegshot) because they let me share more than just “I’m here!” They let me tell a story.

Last week, after a two hour wait in line to pick up my new iPhone (yes, I’m a geek), I went back in to Boston to attend the Ad Club’s Edge: Branded in Boston conference. By the time I got there I had missed Mayor Menino speak about Boston’s Innovation Conference. That was disappointing, but I still saw some excellent – and not so much excellent – panels.

Of particular note in the not-so-excellent column was the first session I caught featuring reps from a couple of Boston’s biggest ad shops, sitting on stage with their large financial clients (the companies are large…not the clients themselves). I had an overall positive experience that day, so I’m not going to harp on the negative too much here, but let’s briefly review why this panel was brutal:

Did anyone learn anything here? How can we trust anything either of these parties say? Clients gush over the agency, agencies gush over the clients.

Financial clients. Behind car accounts, these are the cornerstone of the traditional agency model. And if not for some amazing fumbling by a large British oil company right now, they’d still be the target of some serious public ire. But there they are, sitting, smiling, pretending like they could do no wrong, as long as their trusty agency partner sits by their sides.

We got to watch a bunch of TV spots. And who doesn’t love TV spots? Especially when discussing this town’s ability to innovate. To be fair, they did show a few iPad screenshots. iPads are hip and innovative, right?

Ok, so I’ve gone on a bit longer than I hoped. And please don’t get me wrong: while I don’t work for a big shop, I can’t say I never will again (some of them know what’s up). But these guys were pretty rough to sit through.

In stark contrast was the small agency panel featuring founders from PJA, Pod Design, Small Army, and Beam: this one falls under the excellent category. The four guys up on stage were smart and – most importantly – candid about their shops, their clients, and their industry. My only disappointment was where the panel was scheduled: right after a brutally out of place session on socially responsible architectural design and right before a coffee break that those who hadn’t left yet couldn’t wait to take.

The juxtaposition between this and the big agency panel was made even more evident by a couple quotes I thought were quite poignant. First, David Batista of Beam pointed out that “it’s easy to please clients…what’s hard is to make something that humans actually want to use.” Can’t say that when your client is sitting right next to you. Secondly, Jeff Freedman of Small Army pointed out that “the traditional model is dead, traditional media is not.” And he’s right.

But what both of those quotes really bring to light is the fact that small shops get it: this isn’t about just trying harder at what has been done for years. This is about doing what’s been done for years in a different way.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I plan to, so I went to Nicholas Carr’s reading of “The Shallows” at the Harvard Book Store last night. The subtitle of the work is “What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” a topic in which I have much invested; I have a brain and I use the Internet.

Mr. Carr’s assertions were certainly interesting. He started by pointing out how the innovation of information technology dates back well before the web, perhaps even before Gutenberg’s printing press to when the written word became just as valuable as the spoken. But a book, he argues, requires (allows for?) a single stream of consciousness, providing our long term memory the opportunity to absorb knowledge as the short term consumes it.

The Internet (and as an audience member rightly pointed out, Mr. Carr refers to much of today’s current technological advancements as “The Internet” – so much of what we do is connected, it’s excusable), on the other hand, allows for (requires?) so much going on at once: to the point that in just a few short years blogging has gone from long form prose to 140 characters. In turn, our long and short term memory struggles, our attention spans suffer, our ability to multitask deteriorates.

Irony: all of those books behind Mr. Carr made it extremely difficult to focus.

Questions from the rather large group of people who came to hear Mr. Carr speak were broad. There were those who wanted to know if this was an individual problem or could be solved by institutions (he figures both), those who wanted to know if the benefits of collaboration via connectivity outweighed the negatives (he’s not so sure that’s the case), and those who were curious how long it would take for the anti-Net counter culture to become prevalent (could take some time, probably won’t be significant enough to effect immediate change).

I, being the practical applications and commercial implications type, asked if the iPad – with its emphasis on reading books, browsing magazines, and watching movies – could be a glimmer of hope on the horizon: technology saving us from its own perils. Alas, no. And he’s right: devices such as the iPad and Kindle (and yes, I realize they are not the same device) have only inspired publishers to make their books more “connected,” distracting readers along the way.

Deep. Sigh.

So is this really legit? Are we destined to a life without the capacity for knowledge or memory to which our parents’ generation was privy? Do those of you who, like me, think you’re an excellent multitasker actually struggle to juggle all that’s going on?

As someone who just returned from two weeks [mostly] off the grid, I will say this: it’s refreshing. But by now you’ve gotten bored with this blog post (if you’ve made it this far). And I have about 20 new emails to read.

It seems there are three camps right now when it comes to location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrll: those who don’t know what they are, those who use them and see value, and those who think they are an annoyance – a fad that just takes up room in one’s precious social stream. I am of the belief that LBSs (almost as awkward to say or type as the ROUSs) provide value to both brands and consumers, even if they do so in a way other than what the founders originally intended.

There has been a great deal of chatter about LBSs over the past few months, especially after Foursquare and Gowalla went at it for the public’s love and attention at SXSW in March. Amidst all of this buzz, I was fortunate enough to attend an Ad Club event where Dennis Crowley, one of the founders of Foursquare, spoke about his company’s journey. Dennis, along with co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, built Foursquare (which is really a reincarnation of the Google-killed Dodgeball), wanted a way to keep up with what their friends were doing on the weekends. So they built a system that let people “check-in” to locations, automatically alerting a list of contacts to their whereabouts. As the number of users and venues signed up with Foursquare increased, cafés started offering free coffee to those who check-in the most, users started showing off their “badges,” and restaurants started learning where their clientele were going before and after their meals. Through a series of [awesomely genius] discoveries by the developers, the venues, and the user base, the service now acts as a conduit between venues and consumers; it’s like a virtual membership card – without taking up more space on our key-rings.

I can certainly understand, however, why some of my tech savvy friends still wish 4sq and the like never came to be. In doing what startups do to promote their new service, LBSs are integrating with Twitter and Facebook streams. It’s free promotion. Normally this isn’t a big deal. One Tweet here, one status update there. But with the LBSs, what was originally intended to be shared with your close group of friends is now being broadcast to all who follow you on Twitter – which has come to include professional and social contacts. It’s a catch-22 of viral-ness.

I think eventually those using LBS’s will realize they need to opt not to share every single check-in with their social stream. Personally, I share only those which I would have Tweeted about anyway (I’m in London…I’m at the game…I’m the mayor of CVS ’cause I’m a hypochondriac…ok, maybe I should tone it down a bit myself). And until the volume of context-less irrelevant check-in updates diminishes, maybe LBS’s will still have a stigma about them.

But if you’re one of the naysayers, I implore you to look beyond the quasi-spamming and give it a try. The badges and mayorships seem petty at first. But brands and venues will continue to reward users for checking in. If you’re someone who likes to play with data, I suggest you check out the APIs being provided by these services. There is so much we can do when we have a better understanding of where people are going and when (especially combined with some of that open government data I was talking about a couple weeks ago). And if you’re into sharing more than just the fact that you’ve checked in (tips, photos, etc.), it turns out LBSs are for you.

And who knows, maybe your competitive spirit will inspire you to become mayor of your local taxidermist. Now THAT would be Tweet-worthy.

Last night I attended an event co-sponsored by MITX and MassDOT featuring the Massachusetts Open Data Initiative, MA government’s effort to make its data available to the public in a meaningful, secure way. We heard from a number (a large number, in fact) of members of the MA government from the Secretary of Transportation (the first real part of the initiative is live MBTA bus feeds) to the GM of the MBTA to a gentleman named Tim Vaverchak from the Mass IT department.

Mr. Vaverchak’s talk was last and, as there were so many speakers, each presentation was relatively rushed. But I felt that what Vaverchak was able to outline in the short time he had was intriguing. He spoke of the goals of the MA Open Data Initiative: move beyond just transportation, focus on business & constituent needs, don’t just provide data for data’s sake, allow users (constituents and developers) to rate the value of a data set. These goals were extremely reasonable – even surprisingly so: one doesn’t necessarily expect that from government.

But what the entire evening had me thinking about was an extension on the question of how government can provide data to the public and do it well: how can they do so in a manner that scales? By scale I mean both across departments within a state/local government, but also on a pure numbers basis: how can what MA does here be a model for nationwide data feeds? Read the rest of this entry »

I admit that the term “app store” is quickly making its way onto Buzzword Bingo boards across the country. But sometimes, a buzzword is worthy of just that – buzz.

In truth, the term sells itself short. When referring to app store, we’re not just talking about a commercial market for applications (although that’s certainly a primary focus). Instead, this is a place for a software company to show how extensible all of its engineers’ hard work really is. And, of course, it’s also a showcase for the platform extensions themselves – letting the independent developers shine.

From a marketing perspective, launching an app store can be smart. But you really need to be a first mover in an industry. Otherwise, you become more noise than signal.

All of this is why I’m proud to have been part of LocaModa’s recent DOOH App Store launch – the first of its kind for digital out of home.

Loca’s move (with design help from StudioNumberNine & Daly Creative) continues what the company has already worked very hard to do to standardize a rather splintered industry. The company’s platform extends across multiple media to bring client content together with user interaction. And now it has a great showcase to explain what that actually means.

I badmouth this town a lot. I’m not from here, so it’s easy.

The weather is cold (like I grew up in a tropical paradise?). The sports fans are near sycophantic (and no, that’s not better than the bitterness I grew up with). The drivers are schizophrenic (ok, sure, there’s reason they called I-76 Schuylkill Expressway the “Sure Kill Expressway“). I won’t complain about the politics though…there’s really no contest there.

But the truth is, it’s a beautiful city. It’s got a skyline that defines but doesn’t smother. The river and harbor weaves through the town, providing water views to nearly every window above five stories. And it is, I admit, my home of eight and a half years.

So when I saw the NYTimes put up a great travel review of the harbor front, I found myself getting chills (and not, for once, due to the temperature). From the neighborhood in which I live, to the path on which I run, and even the place at which I’m going to get married (to a home-town girl, of course) – I like it here.

Catching Up With ‘09: My way of making up for putting these posts off…for months at a time.

I’ve participated in the 48 Hour Film Project two years in a row now. While 2008’s entry marked my debut not only as a participant, but a writer and actor, the experience was surely hectic. The 2009 experience, however, proved to be much smoother sailing. We had a smaller, more focused team. I was also fortunate enough to avoid being cast as any character and instead got to try directing out for a bit. And would you believe, I enjoyed it.

We weren’t recognized with any awards, but I wouldn’t have changed much if we had to do this again. Hats off to my production team, Barry Frechette and Bob Holt, for seriously knowing what they were doing.

Cold Feet from Gabi Schaffzin on Vimeo.

Catching Up With ‘09: My way of making up for putting these posts off…for months at a time.

It’s hard to survive in this cross-platform, cross-media, cross-channel, cross-everything-but-dressing world without, well, mixing up your executions a bit. So building VH1’s The Great Debates campaign was both entertaining and relevant.

VH1’s The Great Debates ran for a week after July 4th, providing its viewers with the answer to such debates as “Star Wars vs. Star Trek” or “Beatles vs. Stones.” LocaModa was tasked with bringing this debate to the general public. Using digital out of home and web executions, we gave users the ability to text or click their votes and then we showed live updates in Times Square, in bars across the country, on VH1.com, and on Facebook. We also used some “social polling” to check in with how popular each topic was on Twitter. And VH1 carried the baton even further, displaying live text-in results during the show. How’s that for a little buzz-word bingo action?

(Note: Video shrunk a bit to fit here. See full size.)

The campaign garnered a large number of interactions, especially considering its short seven day flight. And it’s already been named a finalist for a 2009 MITX award. We’re hoping the accolades continue through 2010.

Catching Up With ‘09: My way of making up for putting these posts off…for months at a time.

ATT’s digital out of home presence at pop star Demi Lovato’s summer tour was really my first major launch at my newest gig. We gave concert goers (and online participants) the opportunity to text or email messages and pictures to screens at the show, then provided them with a “playback” viewing of all the messages at that show. Users could go online after a concert and see a virtual replay of the DOOH screen. They could then capture the screen as an image and post it to Facebook.

Turns out 12-18 year old girls love to text. Who knew?

This campaign, one of Loca’s most successful in terms of user numbers, is a great example of engaging an otherwise bored [albeit captive] audience. AT&T had hundreds of eye balls staring at their brand; and by the end of the campaign their brand was on thousands of handsets (in the form of mobile text-backs).

Read the rest of this entry »