5 Reasons Not to Give Up on Location-Based [Cause] Marketing

Written on July 29, 2010 in Location-Based Cause Marketing
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Few users. Mostly male. Educated and influential among friends and family. It’s great, but wait until it becomes more mainstream before jumping in.

Those are the findings of a recent Forrester study on location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt.

You can check out the executive summary here.

Forrester’s “wait and see” findings on location-based marketing (LBM) are not new. Hesitation has always preceded major cultural shifts.

Steel swords will never work. Besides, iron is non-stick. ~ King of the Gauls, 1 B. C.

Printing press? But what will we do with all the monks? ~ Pope Sixtus IV, 1501

I bet I can shoot this arrow faster than you can shoot that gun. ~ Dead Wompanoag Chief, 1676

Take the automobile. In 1900 there was just over 4,000 built in the United States. At the time, the U. S. had a population of 76 million. That’s well less than 1%. Makes the 4% using LBM look like a crowd.

Few drivers. Mostly male. Educated mavens. Not a great time to jump into the car business. But smart people like Henry Ford recognized the opportunity automobiles presented and the shift that was about to happen.

While not as dramatic as the emergence of the automobile or plane or electricity, LBM will nonetheless change marketing, advertising and cause marketing forever. Now isn’t the time for nonprofits to let the future drive by them, especially when change in 2012 is moving a lot faster than a Model T.

Here are a five reasons why nonprofits should stick with location-based marketing.

Forrester didn’t say never, they said not right now. They even went as far to say that brands in the gaming, consumer electronics and sportswear industry should test LBM. Just as Foursquare may be great for male-oriented brands, what about male-oriented causes like City Year, testicular cancer groups and charities that raise money for police officers and firemen. Even if you’re not a male-oriented charity, Forrester isn’t calling LBM a fad that should be ignored.

The web is dead. Long live the mobile web. Steve Rubel cited a Morgan Stanley report earlier this month that said within five years global internet consumption on mobile devices will surpass the same activity on PCs. No one knows for sure how much Internet use on mobile devices will grow, but I these pocket devices will play a bigger and bigger role in web surfing. And with it how products and services are marketed to us when we are in or near our favorite businesses. Forget the players. Foursquare, Gowalla and other location services will come and go. But location-based marketing will be a mainstay of the mobile web.

Pinups won’t last forever. No one is sadder than I am about this since Noland Hoshino has crowned me the “Pinup King.” But the bloom is already off pinups, which have been around since at least the 1970′s, and their bar codes are numbered. Location-based marketing is a new opportunity for cause marketers to engage consumers where they shop and where they care. Shoppers that check-in to a retailer will be asked to support a cause, possibly in exchange for savings at the register. If they agree, they can make the donation right on their smartphone independent of the cashier. Or perhaps they’ll get a reminder when they check-in that a favorite shampoo in aisle four supports a cancer cause.

Don’t wait for users. Enlist them. Don’t wait around for Foursquare to become Facebook. Create your own success now. Last week I wrote on QR codes–a new concept to most people–and how a UK nonprofit didn’t wait for supporters to show-up at their second-hand clothing stores with smartphones with QR readers. They made QR readers available to their customers so they could try-out the new technology for themselves. Find ways to integrate LBM into your existing programs and events. If you do a walk, ask walkers to use Foursquare to check-out all the tips you’ve gathered on interesting landmarks, water stops, prize areas, etc. along the route. Motivate and incentivize people to become users, instead of just waiting around for them to catch-up.

We’re not talking about a huge investment of time. It’s not like dropping LBM activities from your social media portfolio will save you 10 hours a week of work. Foursquare may be tiny compared to Facebook, but it’s also a lot less sophisticated. That will change as the platform evolves but right now you need to (1) use LBM, (2) encourage others to use it and (3) stay abreast of new developments (which in the cause arena I’ll share with you here so that’s really no very hard :) ). Of all the social media tools my organization uses, LBM requires the least amount of work.

It also currently delivers the smallest return. But like the seeds you plant in the spring, I know that’s going to change. And one day I expect to harvest a bumper crop.

Shiny Object Addiction: A 7-Step Program

Written on July 27, 2010 in Cause Practices
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Hi. My name is Joe and I have Shiny Object Addiction.

I naturally reach for the hot tool of the day. The latest devices, the iPad, the iPhone 4G. The cool services like Twitter, Foursquare and now QR codes. The techie productivity tools like Evernote and Dropbox.

I do this because of peer pressure, buzz and the desire to be first. I have little regard for need or utility. I waste time and money, especially when it’s yours.

I’m guilty of fondling the hammer too much, and I guess I should have been struck with blindness years ago.

Last week when I wrote about QR codes Estrella Rosenberg wrote what I think a lot of us were feeling.

Great Joe….something new for me to obsess over, investigate and plan campaigns around!!

I write about these new shiny objects with gusto, but I feel Estrella’s anxiety and pain.

Fortunately, I spent years in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not for me, but with my Dad, who achieved sobriety thanks to AA.

Like alcohol, shiny objects are an addiction that need their own step program. Here’s mine.

Step 1: I am powerless to shiny objects. I admit I’ve kissed my iPhone before I kissed my wife before bed each night. That’s wrong. (I have since reversed the order.)

Step 2: I believe that a power greater than myself can restore my sanity. That power is a strict adherence to the bottom-line benefits of these shiny objects. If I’m clear on how they can or will raise money for my cause, make me more productive and enhance my professional development they will serve me well.

Step 3: I’ve made a decision to turn my life over to the care of a divine being. Actually, two: my wife, Deb, and my closest colleague, Joanna MacDonald. Because if Shiny Object Addiction doesn’t kill me, they most certainly will. I’m committed to taking their advice on which shiny objects I should stick with and which ones I should shelf. Since my wife introduces herself to people as a “Twidow” whose husband drowned in the stream of Twitter, and Joanna who thinks email is social media, this should be interesting. But I am all trusting. It will be good to get advice from two people outside the beltway of tech and social media.

Step 4: I’ve made a moral inventory of my offenses. I’ve bought new tech I neither needed nor could afford. I’ve checked-in to places I never visited. I’ve tweeted at funerals. I’ve praised shiny objects that I’ve never even tried. I’ve ridiculed people who carry planners. There’s a place for people like me in Hell. And there are no bars.

Step 5: I’ve admitted to others the error of my ways. I plan a full confessional to Geoff Livingston as he was the one who prompted me to reform my wicked ways. Like the public outcry that followed the Komen/Kentucky Fried Chicken cause marketing pact, my chickens have come home to roost. At least I didn’t compound my error by deep frying my chickens and selling them as health food.

Step 6: I’ve created a list of people I’ve offended, and plan to make ammends to them all. My family will be first. As for the rest of you: don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Step 7: I want to bring these steps to others afflicted with Shiny Object Addiction. Surely I’m not the only one who’s trod to the edge of the abyss.

Have you taken similar steps to curb your use of these shiny objects?

What’s your step program to control your addiction and avoid possible blindness?

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Are QR Codes the Next Big Thing for Cause Marketing?

Written on July 21, 2010 in Cause Marketing & Social Media
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Imagine this: you visit your local supermarket and are asked to support a local food pantry. You a buy a pinup for a buck. On your receipt is message that you can learn more about the cause you just supported by scanning this barcode with your smartphone.

In your car before you leave the supermarket parking lot you run your iPhone over the barcode and a one minute video airs on a food pantry like no other. It’s run out of your local hospital. The pantry started by feeding a few thousand patients every year. In 2009 it fed 75,000 men, women and children. The video closes with an image of a food line that snakes down the hallway and around the corner. It is after all the busiest day of the year, the day before Thanksgiving.

Wow.

The cool thing is that you don’t have imagine this happening. It already is. In a recent tweet Conehead Chris Mann pointed me to this article on how two U.K. groups are using barcodes, RFID tags or QR Codes, as they seem to be most commonly called, to add personal history to donated items. (Note: What a great idea for Goodwill!)

Mashable thinks QR codes may be headed for a breakout. Just yesterday, it highlighted Stickybits, an app I’ve been playing around with for a couple of months.

Stickybits brings context to real-world objects with its next generation approach to the QR code. The mobile app is primarily a barcode scanner — powered by Red Laser — but it takes the technology into the realm of fun by creating a social and shared experience around any item in the physical world that possesses a barcode.

Download the iPhone or Android application, scan your favorite cereal box, add an item — maybe a related recipe, but any video, photo, audio clip or comment will do — and you’ve just started a digital thread around that item.

Think of the potential for cause marketers to make transactional programs less, well, transactional and more meaningful. When you pick up a mug at Starbucks that supports Product (RED) you can scan the QR code to hear the story of a man who benefited directly from the life-saving HIV drugs RED provides and Starbucks funds.

But that’s not all. Supporters can scan the barcode and use their smartphone to record why they support Product (RED), which then can be viewed by the next person who holds the mug up to a smartphone.

Consumers scanning QR codes for cause content will not happen overnight. But adopting QR codes encourages cause marketers to do two important things.

  • It helps build a stronger charitable and emotional connection among causes, businesses and consumers. (QR codes should also make cause marketing critics feel better that CM gifts aren’t thoughtless one-offs.)
  • It prepares us for the mobile web. The portable technology that Red Laser represents and the type of mobile content it links to is the future for which we should all be preparing. Don’t you agree?

What do you think of QR codes? Do they have a place in cause marketing or in fundraising in general? How would you use them in a program?

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