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The problem with Foursquare and all the free coffees
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I’m sorry, but someone had to say it. Am I the only one who’s a bit sick of hearing that xyz cafe/bar/restaurant is giving away free coffees to the mayor of their establishment? The truth is it was great when the first few companies did it – used a brand new tool and an innovative way to reach their customers. It was quirky and fun. But then everyone else came along and did the same thing and sort of took the fun out of it.
This is great if you want to reach a (very small) portion of your customers with a nice offer using new technology. I don’t have a problem if companies want to do this, but the song and dance that’s being made around giving away a free coffee to your mayor is a little too much to take. The problem I have is not so much the fact that businesses are doing this, but this has unfortunately now defined companies ‘doing Foursquare’. It shows misguided thinking in that it’s the tool that makes you innovative, when it’s not. It’s what you do with it. I firmly believe that companies should be embracing an app like Foursquare, but I’d like to see it being used a bit more originally.
It was recently announced that two major brands in the UK were targeting their customers through Foursquare : Dominos and Debenhams. When I read the headline, I started to get excited. Big brands embracing what is still a new way to reach their consumers and taking full advantage of what Foursquare could do for them. Then I read that they were offering free pizza and coffee, respectively, to their mayors. Is this really the best that a major brand can do? I really hope not. Now it’s easy to see how this happened, a new free tool has come along – everyone’s using it and all you need to do to show your company is on board is to put a sign in your window to say ‘free coffee for all mayors’. 95% of your customers won’t know what you mean, but at least you’ve ticked the social media box and you can get on with your day.
Offering free coffees through Foursquare is nothing more than a gimmick. It is a tempting one because of the ease of use, but when you think about it, you’re only rewarding one or two of your super-loyal customers anyway. Great if that’s your aim, but you can be sure that most companies want to do more than this with their marketing efforts. If you really think that Foursquare is the one for you, I’m not suggesting that you don’t use it for fear of appearing to jump on the bandwagon, but to warn you that offering a free coffee isn’t pushing any boundaries and isn’t using the app to it’s full capabilities. In social media things gets old fairly quickly and I really think we’ve reached the saturation point for free stuff for mayors.
What is encouraging is that Foursquare are interested in aligning themselves with brands : they’re actively pursuing it. Again though this seems to be focused around the ‘free stuff’ initiative. I know we all like free stuff, but we also like to have fun. What about rewards for recruiting a mayor of Burger King to become mayor of your Macdonald’s franchise? What about setting challenges for your customers? Unlocking special badges for visiting different outlets of your store? Or if it really does need to be free stuff, then how about spot prizes for everyone that checks in within a certain period?
Warner Bros are going about it in the right way, with a promotion for their Valentine’s Day movie that encourages you to check in to romantic spot. This actually creates a bit of fun and a challenge around the app, outside of rewarding people for where they were checking in anyway. I hope this is the kind of space Foursquare moves into more and I hope that we see more brands doing amazing things with the app beyond a free coffee or doughnut.
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Hi Lauren,
Nothing to ad really just to say ‘excellent post’. It is true for a whole heap of business small or big. They have ‘got’ the net or are ‘doing’ the twitter or ‘on’ facebook, then that’s that. No further thought given to the use of these tools other than to say that they have the tool itself. Pity because of the many benefits but room for agencies to help explain this to clients.
Good luck in the new office!
Hi Steven, thanks so much for the nice comment. You’re definitely right about the responsibility of agencies, and I fall under that category! I think it’s easy enough for anyone to ‘do’ social media, but doing it well is an entirely different thing. Hopefully that’s where we come in
Moving office is hectic!
Excellent post and some very valid points. I think Foursquare have a lot in the pipeline and should be judged when they finally give businesses the ability to manage their pages.
Thanks Niall. I’m sure there’s no doubt that Foursquare will have some exciting stuff in the pipeline and it’s encouraging that they’re so open to working with businesses in an official capacity. Managed business pages will surely be in the pipeline. You’d hope so anyway.
Good post. I would really like to see companies clubbing together with each other. E.g Get half price ice cream from our ice cream shop if you go to such and such a pie shop for your main course (I’ve always thought small indie businesses should make more of this.) Would also be nice to have rewards that are not tangible. Such as if I am the mayor of my favourite sandwich shop I get to create a special sandwich that people can buy for a week. Just need to start thinking outside of the box a little more, there are so many opps. I really like the idea of setting challenges for your customers.
Hi Tom. I was going to write about ‘money can’t buy’ rewards, but thought that was too many ‘ors’. I thought it would be nice to get a pizza named after you for a week etc..
The idea of small businesses clubbing together is a really nice one, and totally achievable as it’s a free tool. Just need the right creative thinking behind it and it could work really well.
Who says everyone has to innovate all of the time though? Let’s remember that Foursquare is very new. Both they, and brands, are still figuring out how best to use it & where it can be taken. Surely a sensible approach from any agency would be to recommend that a client “dip their toe” into what are currently unknown waters (reach is still somewhat limited, particularly in the Irish market, and as yet there aren’t any figures doing the rounds about uptake/awareness of offer etc) before they jump right in?
Innovative is great for making waves and generating additional PR, but at the end of the day what the “free coffee” offers are doing, albeit at a very basic level, are creating competition for people to become the Mayor; thus giving reason to check-in, aka driving footfall into the store, whereupon it’s the retailer’s job to convert that into sales. Until we, and Foursquare, not only know where it’s going but have an idea of what the most basic promotions can do in terms of addressing business KPIs, then it’s irresponsible to go overboard with innovation. It’s about the bottom line at the end of the day.
New & different is always nice when it’s done well and we should all be pushing clients and media to push existing boundaries. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water eh. Whatever happened to trial & refine?
I definitely agree that it’s new and we’re still in a ‘figuring out’ phase, but it just doesn’t seem like that much is being done to figure out where it can be taken, other than with the free offers. I only came across a very few examples, such as Warner Bros, that are starting to do something a bit different.
Being innovative isn’t just about making great PR, it’s about doing something that reaches your customers and encourages them to engage with you on a completely new level. Looking at it from a basic level, it isn’t that great a marketing tool to offer an incentive for your mayor – when you look at the amount of people that are likely to compete for a mayorship(mayordom??)
Absolutely agree with your point on trialling and refining – but social media is about pushing the boundaries, making mistakes and learning from them. Just want to see more brands doing this with something like Foursquare, where the potential benefits are so great but aren’t being explored yet. And I recognise my own responsbility in this respect, given my job, and I really want to get my teeth into a project soon where I can use a tool like this.
Sooooo I probably shouldn’t mention that we’re giving a free pizza slice to our mayors:) to be honest there is very few using it so I can’t really do much with it yet. If we get more involved I would try to be more creative but for the moment with only a handful checking in I’ll stick with Facebook and my cookalong which is going quite well. ciao…
Ahhh no, course you should mention it! As someone that offers it as a business I’d love to know how it’s working for you and what made you decide to offer it.
Brands are only just getting to grips with Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Blogging etc and they’ve been around for years. If you were making this point further down the line I’d probably be more inclined to agree. But the insistence that every new medium hits the ground running is not realistic. Foursquare has a lot of work to do before it becomes something that can add obvious value to clients.
They have recently released their API, which is going to allow for a lot more adaptablity & innovation. IMO that’s going to be where a lot of the potential lies.
As for what Social Media is about, I thought it was about conversation, interaction & engagement. Not pushing boundaries. It’s one part of a larger shift in communication consumption as far as I see it – not merely something which exists for brands to utilise. Social media exists happily without brand interaction – where our task lies is in marrying the two together in a mutually acceptable & beneficial way. Not just trying to use it in a way that has never been done before.
Like I say, if all we were seeing in 6 – 12 months time these “free coffee” style offers then I’d totally be in agreement. But it’s too new to make such a judgement. The race to innovate often means that important, basic lessons don’t get learnt or are overlooked & repeated, ultimately undermining the potential value of the individual medium and social media as a whole.
I agree with you on it being very new to make a judgement, which is why I think it’s a shame that at such an early stage it seems to be in this rut of the free offers thing.
Valid points on what social media is about – can’t really be defined in a few points though and I wasn’t suggesting that it’s only about pushing boundaries, just that this is one of the things that makes it so great.
The fact that it has a lot of work to do is very important, particularly with the API. I’m by no means suggesting that we’ve seen all that Foursquare has to offer, sure there are many amazing things to come that I can’t even comprehend yet. I just don’t think this free offer thing is really helping that many businesses.
My problem with it at the moment is that we have the same mayor since we started and he hasn’t been in the shop in over 2 weeks and a customer who checked in everyday last week hasn’t become mayor? Does anyone know if I have to do something to change it, I thought it automatically did it itself? I started it after having a conversation with one of my tecchie customers, I really like it and will start being more creative once it gets a bigger following, at the moment I’ve only had a handful of check ins….
Hey Lorraine. As far as I’m aware this should happen automatically, so I presume your previous customer checked in an awful lot or they’re still checking in when they’re nearby maybe?
I think it’s great that you got the idea from a customer of yours and as it grows I hope that a lot more people start checking in and that you can reach them in new ways.
I’m definitely not sick of seeing places give free stuff to mayor’s – I personally would like to see more. Maybe I haven’t been enough places but I haven’t seen any signs anywhere or anything online(other than La Cucina
) announcing free stuff for people in Ireland. I’m all for the innovation also Lauren – totally agree on that but it has to start somewhere I guess.
Hi Brid. I’d like to see more businesses using Foursquare, but I can’t say that I agree that I want to see more of the ‘free stuff’ offers.
I’m sure that more businesses will start to use it, I’d just to like to see some more creativity, particularly from the big brands that are getting involved, like Dominos and Debenhams.
Lauren,
I like this post a lot. Mostly because I work for Whrrl, which is also a location-based app like Foursquare, and we offer merchant offers in-app as well. This reminds me to think outside the box when it comes to brainstorming ideas for our partners/merchants when using Whrrl. You’re right – it IS a lot more than just free stuff for checking in. The neat thing about Whrrl is that we have pic capabilities, so we’ve tried to do some “offers” where you can Tweet out a pic of your check in to win something. Alternatively, we also have Societies in Whrrl. ie: Check in to the hotel for a conference, and get a special membership and badge on profile for being part of that Society. You then get to recommend places and things to do based on the Societies you’re in.
Anyway, I LOVE the creativity like you do – and would love to hear some more of your ideas.
I think you make good points about wanting to see more innovation to the use of this new technology. Not to regurgitate what’s already been said, but Foursquare IS a new technology, so companies are still trying to figure it out. On top of that, you make it sound like the only things these companies are doing is offering a free coffee/pizza to the mayor. This is absolutely not the case. I went to New Orleans, DC, Baltimore, and Nashville in the past week, and while some establishments’ specials involved giving something to “The Mayor”, I saw more establishments give something away for your fourth visit to their cafe/restaurant/bar. It’s a frequent visitor card, except it uses new technology instead. It’s not just about who shows up the most to their place at some of these establishments. So, to be frank, I think you should do a little more searching before criticizing companies who are just figuring this stuff out – not everyone treats The Mayor to a free cup of coffee.
Hi Patrick, thanks for the comment, and the recommendation that I do more research
I didn’t say anywhere that this is the only thing that companies are doing, I did include an example of a high profile company (Warner Bros) that were using it in a different way, and I said that this was encouraging.
You’re certainly not alone in your view that is too new for me to making the kind of assessment that I have done and it’s certainly a valid point. But again, it just reiterates my point that given it’s so new, it’s unfortunate that so many companies seem to be offering this ‘free coffee’ thing, especially as it will only be relevant to a very small proportion of your customers.
It’s good to hear that businesses are using it in the way you’ve outlined, so thanks for highlighting those examples.
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Great post. I think you’re talking about the same problem that keeps happening again and again in every new medium – focusing on the tactic first, instead of the objective, then strategy, then tactic. If the marketing objective is to get curren customers to come back more often, a free coffee to the mayor is a good way to go. If you’re trying to increase first time shoppers or steal business from your competitors though, you’ll have to use the medium in a different way (like one of the ways you mentioned above). I know that it’s more interesting to talk about the end use tool, but marketeer can’t lose sight of why they’re involved in the medium in the first place.
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