Of course, foursquare’s not the only game in town.

While the world figures out what to make of Facebook Places, Gowalla continues to be the best LBS alternative to foursquare. While both services have much in common, one dramatic difference is Gowalla’s disinterest in rewarding users for checking-in repeatedly at a single venue (i.e. foursquare’s “mayors”). Instead, Gowalla tends to reward users for checking-in at a variety of venues. In some cases, these are part of coordinated “trips” that are produced by Gowalla users and brand partners. (National Geographic‘s robust collection of trips is a particularly good example of brand-building via LBS.) For any brand looking to connect on a regional level, this Gowalla feature allows you to creating a walking tour of, say, bars in a given city with Negra Modelo on tap.

A new addition called Highlights promises to add another layer of personalization to this content, with users being able to label spots as the best nighttime views, best guilty pleasure, or best kept secret (I think I’ve found a flaw in that last one). Assuming that Gowalla has plans to integrate marketers into these Highlights, there’s plenty of room for partnerships – I’m sure a number of bridal products would love to get a piece of the “Hitched” highlights.

But, Gowalla perks work at individual locations as well. Gowalla users often receive virtual items for checking-in at certain locations (which can subsequently be dropped or swapped at other locations). For instance, you might receive a metal robot when you check-in at a toy store, or you might receive free tickets to an NBA game by checking-in to sportsbars and basketball courts. Huh, wha? Yes, the New Jersey Nets hid 250 pairs of virtual (but redeemable) tickets at various Gowalla locations in the area for their last game of the season! Our “athletically challenged” colleagues here at Upshot might be more interested in a similar giveaway from Adobe, in which virtual items redeemable for a dozen free copies of Creative Suite 5 were distributed across various Gowalla spots nationwide. (A summertime campaign from Eye-Fi spruced up this model by including a random sweepstakes for anyone checking-in at Apple Stores.)

The aforementioned Nets promotion brought up a particularly compelling way for brands to deal with unused inventory (a problem that the Nets had ample opportunities to consider – heyyo!). The same article that described the Nets campaign suggested that hotels could offer unsold rooms in a similar fashion, in the hopes that the winners would make additional purchases via room service or on-site bars and restaurants. (The same mentality could be applied to movie theaters and amusement parks.) Of course, the other benefit is that a LBS-user is almost certainly going to be an active participant in social media, so they are more likely to start conversations about your brand than a traditional contest winner. Why not focus your rewards on someone who’s likely to be a vocal brand advocate?

Before moving on to the next topic, we should add that, um, we’re still not done here. In fact, our coverage of marketers on foursquare and Gowalla is still overlooking brands who are doing great work on other LBSs. Before you get completely exasperated, yes, the slew of services is a problem, and yes, we’ll be addressing this at a later time. But no, this won’t undermine the impending “Year of Location” – in fact, it should help. That’s a whole ‘nother post, though. In the meantime, we’d like to call your attention to Red Bull’s work with Whrrl, simply because it’s a stellar example of a Niche Network in action. When people join the Red Bull Society on Whrrl, they’re privy to exclusive deals (including drink discounts at select bars and clubs) and access to Red Bull events (such as tickets to the Red Bull Air Race in NYC). When our previous post asked “what’s the point of checking-in?” this is about as good an answer as you can give: being part of an exclusive community with tangible benefits, organized around a set of common [and local] interests. We hope other brands continue to do the same. But if they don’t, you can always garner attention with wacky offers like free Virgin America airline tickets for checking-in to taco trucks on Loopt. Wait, wha?

Y’know, the one we called out back in March. But no worries, we’re glad you’re all coming around. In fact, we’re going to spend the next couple of posts sorting out the marketing implications these recent announcements, because we’re just that nice.

The reigning mayor of the location-based space continues to be foursquare, which recently hit its 3 millionth user. foursquare has maintained their lead over other location-based players largely because of their willingness to partner with broad range of marketers, who often end up promoting the service in their own ad campaigns (such as VH1′s foursquare commercial). To get us in the mood for tackling this location-mania, left break down a few foursquare marketing applications from the past few months.

Skeptics of location-based services always start with the same question: what’s the point of checking-in? Of course, the answer depends on a number of things, including whether the venue is offering a particularly compelling incentive. For retailers, rewarding check-ins and mayorships are clearly the low hanging fruit for LBS involvement. Radio Shack started providing 10% off of purchases for anyone who checks-in, and 20% off for each store’s mayor. In return, the chain essentially gets free advertising in the form of a peer recommendation. Likewise, Chili’s restaurants figured out that free chips & salsa are a small price to pay for getting their guests to broadcast each visit to their social networks. But, Kona Grill took this one step further with their Swarm Parties, playing off the badge that foursquare users earn when they check-in to events with 50 or more attendees. Kona encouraged these swarms to hit their restaurants by offering special items during the gatherings, and of course, provided them free of charge for the current foursquare mayor. Again, the free advertising angle is a pretty sweet deal for the restaurant: if they get 50+ diners broadcasting their attendance to their social networks at the same time, the potential reach is certainly worth the price of giving away a few meals (not to mention getting 50+ customers in the door!).

The Six Flags theme parks are also pretty darn good at getting people to check-in, thanks to a wide variety of promotions and incentives. For instance, whoever is still holding the mayorship of each park on September 7th will win a season pass (looks like you’d better take work off for the next week!), while anyone who checks in 10+ times will get a virtual badge and an entry in a sweepstakes for a 2011 front-of-each-line pass. We like the fact that Six Flags has staggered these promotions to appeal to different levels of foursquare users. After all, only one person gets to be the mayor, but anyone with a season pass has a shot at 10 check-ins. Six Flags also uses the often-ignored “tips” section for each park to communicate additional deals (e.g. bring a Coke can for 2-for-1 weekday admission) and tips to improve the visitor’s experience (e.g. where to find bathrooms with short lines).

Speaking of fun stuff on foursquare, we’re a bit perplexed why more brands haven’t used foursquare to provide a digital twist on the ol’ scavenger hunt. One of the few examples we’ve seen was Jimmy Choo using the service to give away shoes as part of an entertaining treasure hunt. Jimmy Choo shoes would “check in” at various foursquare locations, and anyone following the brand could hustle down to the spot to try to locate the pair first. Finders, keepers!

Checking-in at live events is nothing new – or at least, it isn’t new for readers ’round here. Heck, if you can get a variety of badges for checking-in at the Today show’s live concerts, shouldn’t every event offer this simple form of recognition? Why yes, yes they should. But, we like the fact that the Today show is introducing the concept of location-based check-ins to a different demographic than, say, the folks attending the Banksy movie. For these services to continue to grow, an introduction via trusted names like Today will make the transition much smoother for new users.

Phew. Consider yourself checked-in to foursquare. Of course, we’ve overlooked plenty of examples, too. If you’ve seen some fancy foursquare integrations that aren’t listed here, please share them in the comments below!

Unless it’s just an interactive window display from InWindow Outdoor.

In yet another example of the movie industry’s willingness to embrace Immersive Sensory Experiences, the above display is part of an OOH campaign for the upcoming movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice . Once passersby finish playing the gesture-based games, they can snap a photo of themselves embedded in one of the movie scenes and share it on Facebook (where the movie has already amassed over 100,00 fans). Speaking of Facebook, visitors to the page can play the plasma bolt game there too, just in case Hollywood isn’t exactly on their way to work. This is a great example of making sure that an interactive campaign is integrated across multiple touchpoints, ensuring that the experience lives on beyond a handful of tourists in L.A.

Either way, we figure you must be enjoying the slew of great marketing efforts that have surrounded the games. If you haven’t seen it already, you should definitely spend three minutes watching Nike’s “Write the Future” ad, which shows the different paths the players’ lives will take depending on their successes and failures. Of course, we already called your attention to Marca’s killer calendar, which provides an enormously helpful service to fans who want to watch the games.

In fact, the only thing missing from Marca’s service is showing users where they can watch their favorite team. Fortunately, Bing is filling in the gap. Their Home Turf Finder is an excellent example of their positioning as a “decision engine,” in which they enable informed decisions rather than providing users with massive amounts of unfiltered data. In this case, Bing maps are overlaid with information about which bars (in select cities) are showing the World Cup games. Better yet, the bars are filtered by their national allegiances, so that fans of a particular country can watch with their peers instead of their mortal enemies (that’s right, we know all about your longstanding feud with Honduras).

While this is an excellent application of Concierge Culture, it’s an even smarter example of how our Hometown’s Hero trend enables brands to make deep, meaningful connections with consumers on a local level. For anyone living in these cities, Bing is providing extremely valuable recommendations by collecting specific local knowledge and filtering it in a useful manner. It’s the kind of targeted content that encourages discovery, as consumers may not even realize that bars in their vicinity have a particular affiliation for certain teams. In the long run, Bing is changing consumer expectations of a particular industry (in this case, search) by providing a more personalized, relevant solution for the consumers. Google shouldn’t be the only one taking note.

Thankfully, all that waiting’s become far more tolerable with the ability to entertain ourselves via mobile devices, ubiquitous media, and a slew of immersive sensory experiences at our disposal. (Man, are we spoiled!) But how many brands are taking advantage of these lingering moments? This is something we’ve discussed as part of our work on various P&G hair color brands, which require consumers to sit around as part of the process. Sure, today’s consumer can probably entertain herself, but why can’t the brand help? After all, for each of these products, we know exactly how long this consumer is waiting around.

For instance, take eggwatchers.com, a site that emerged from a British agency’s “hack day.” Visitors to the site enter their egg’s characteristics and the desired texture, and the site will calculate exactly how long the egg needs to be boiled. But, now that the site knows exactly how long the user will be occupied, it also knows exactly how long that visitor needs to be entertained. Thus, it matches the user with a Youtube video that lasts exactly as long as the boiling time. Talk about delighting the consumer!

Of course, consumers are stuck sitting around outside their homes as well. We’ve seen a handful of brands entertaining consumers as they wait at bus stops, but Joel Kyack, an artist in Los Angeles, wanted to bring the same kind of entertainment to folks stuck in the city’s infamous traffic jams. Enter Superclogger, a guerrilla puppet show intended to entertain deadlocked drivers. Kyack broadcasts the audio portion of his show to the radios of cars in his vicinity, while also tweeting the location of his truck. Are we suggesting that Kraft loads up an Athenos puppet and head out on the Dan Ryan Expressway? Um, no. We’re just saying that consumers are increasingly accustomed to being entertained whenever there’s downtime, and there’s room for marketers to provide branded entertainment in these intervals.

Granted, that puts marketers in competition with distractions ranging from iPods to iPhones to iPads, and breaking through that kind of clutter requires especially engaging content. Fortunately, we know that brands can provide this kind of entertainment. For instance, LVMH has created a site called Nowness (pictured above), which provides a quick-hitting daily dose of… well, immersive sensory experiences drawn from the worlds of “fashion, art, cinema, entertainment, culture, music, gastronomy, design, travel, and the world of luxury.” Gee, I hope they didn’t miss anything. The site makes only passing mentions of LVMH, but its stated goal is to further define, encourage the luxurious lifestyles of LVMH consumers (a niche network, for sure). But, from our vantage point, it looks like an effective way to build the LVMH brand through curated entertainment. And while it’s not explicitly intended to be a time-filler, it can certainly function that way due to the brevity of each entry.

But, getting back to the question at hand: as a brand, are you aware of any moments (however brief) where your target consumer is stuck waiting around? If so, you’ve got a potential consumer who’s receptive to entertainment. And if you can’t provide it, they’ll find it somewhere else.

Or, at least that’s what their ads tend to say.

And who says marketing isn’t effective?

But Avatar is undoubtedly a spectacle, so the release of the movie on DVD/Blu-Ray required a campaign that lived up to the buzz. Thankfully, Upshot Inform alumnus Inwindow Outdoor was on the scene, creating three stations that allow you to turn yourself into a Na’vi character. It’s a simple idea, and if the hour-long lines in the above video are any indication, it was definitely brilliantly activated.

This campaign serves as a reminder that photosharing tactics are still very popular with consumers, which are, at heart, a fairly simple operation. Still, the bar has been set high thanks to Immersive Sensory Experiences like this Avatar example. If your brand wants to offer a photosharing application (either online or in-real-life), they need to be aware that this is the kind of competition they are up against, regardless of category.

In the first video on the right, Swiss watch brand Tissot demos an AR application that lets you see how 28 of their watches look on your own wrist. After all, it’s not like you’re really buying these things just to tell you the time – you’ve got a $500 computer in your pocket that does that! As we mentioned in our SXSW Interactive coverage, using AR in this manner allows marketers to offer an extremely broad selection of products (to appease consumers’ demands for customization) without having to find a physical space to put all these items. Not to mention the fact that if a consumer in a brick-and-mortar store actually tried on 28 watches in the row, your poor salespeople would be making nooses out of watch bands.

While physical limitations also prevent travel companies from bringing every option to their customers, the industry has generally done an admirable job of offering slick images and videos as proxies. But, Hotels.com recognizes that these tactics don’t quite offer the same excitement as a 3D experience, so they created virtualvacay.com to provide an augmented reality experience for ten of their featured cities.

Okay, you’re not that impressed. How about this: each city offers unique activities that can be accessed via the AR platform, such as riding a bull in Denver or getting hitched on the go in Las Vegas. Users can snap images of themselves taking part in the activity, and send them to friends via social networks.

Moreover, the site teams with the Weather Channel and Metromix to provide real-time weather and events happening in each city. Impressed yet? You should be – see the second video on the right.

Even when the augmented reality applications aren’t practical, they’re at least achieving a much higher level of quality in order to entertain users (which we know is increasingly important thanks to the rise of Immersive Sensory Experiences). Just take a look at the “Release The Kraken” experience promoting the movie Clash Of The Titans, shown below. Even those with the most cynical views about the future of AR have to admit that’s just friggin’ cool.

While we did hit on a bit of augmented reality in our SXSW Dispatch, we’ve seen so many great applications in recent months that it seemed like the right time for a massive AR roundup! (It also seemed like the right time to officially add an Augmented Reality category to the Technology menu above.)

As we’ve stated before, the practical marketing applications of AR are increasingly nudging the gimmicky applications out of the limelight. Similar to the post office example in that link, Samsung’s using augmented reality to help you determine whether their TVs will fit on your wall. Once you see that shiny piece of technology laid out in your living room, it sure is hard to resist, right?

Augmented reality is also enhancing the online shopping experience. Fashionista (demoed in the video above) gets us closer to a Jetsons-like existence by making a “virtual fitting room” a reality. Users can virtually try on clothes and ask friends for instant feedback via social media, bringing a social element to the often-solitary experience of online shopping.  (Speaking of social, the same company is also integrating AR with videoconferencing, which should really bring client presentations to life.) Ray Bans offers a similar service that lets consumers see how they’d look in shades.

While many AR applications have been created for the consumer sitting at their home computer, a number of enterprising in-store marketers have realized the potential of AR at retail. We previously showed a demo of LEGO’s in-store kiosks, but across the Pacific, the Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido has created a “mirror” for trying on different makeup combinations. We expect to see more examples of this in the coming year – we’ll share ‘em when we see ‘em.

Straddling both the in-store world and the home environment, Adidas has done an amazing job providing consumers with an immersive augmented reality experience (see the video to the right). Markers on the tongues of the shoes bring consumers into a world of games and impressive 3D landscapes, providing Adidas with an opportunity to engage their consumers at kiosks in-store and long after the shoe purchase.

There are obvious applications for print advertising, too. Presumably, you’ve heard about Esquire magazine’s augmented issue, but Calvin Klein took it to somewhere far more explicit with their campaign in GQ. Let’s just say that if you’re a fan of underwear-clad men shoving their junk in your face, have we got a campaign for you! (Which leaves us wondering: shouldn’t that ad be appearing in Cosmo instead of GQ? Or are we missing something?)

Need more examples? Oh, we’ve got ‘em.

• We’ve now seen a couple of beer brands (here and here) augmenting location data to help their consumers find bars serving their beers. It’s bordering on gimmicky, though – we’re hoping alcohol marketers get a little more clever in the coming months.
• There’s potential for event marketers, too. Louisiana’s Voodoo Experience used AR to direct festival attendees to performances, attractions and services.
• Doritos went huge (literally) with their AR execution in Brazil.
• The magical nature of AR has obvious implications for entertaining kids, as Brights & Stripes have released a clothing line that doubles as an AR-toy for kids.
• Or, if you’re an adult who enjoys acting like a kid, augmented reality will enable you to turn your face into Optimus Prime’s mug.
• A number of musicians have recognized the value of targeting a more tech-savvy niche. A recent John Mayer CD featured an AR marker on the cover that brought up an interactive music video. (The Lost Valentinos got in on it, too.)
• To promote the chain’s 25th anniversary, Papa John’s printed a marker on their pizza boxes that took consumers to a game featuring the founder’s Camaro.
• Hallmark is now offering AR-enhanced greeting cards.
• GE makes wind power a lot more fun.
• If you’ve got about eight minutes, check out how Bing’s planning to augment their maps. You’ll be impressed!

If you see other examples worth sharing, send ‘em our way!

• Part 1: Setting the Mobile Stage. We talked about how the rise of the mobile web and apps are changing the physical way we interact with our phones. Can we still even call it a phone when it’s rarely at our ear?
• Part 2: Touching Me, Touching You. Interactive, tactile experiences are enhancing in-store marketing in incredible ways. But, the next developments will likely be touch-less.
• Part 3: Not Location, but Local. Mobile apps are proving useful for consumers who continue to seek out information on local items (especially food).
• Part 4: Playing around at SXSW. We look at effective gaming strategies for incentivizing employees, rewarding responsible consumer behavior, and driving collaboration.
• Part 5: How App-Makers Feel About “After the App.” We considered what works for smartphone apps, and when they don’t work, whether the mobile web is the place to be.
• Part 6: The Location Wars. The “winner” of the location wars won’t be Gowalla or foursquare; it’ll be the brand that understands how to use location-based social networking to create compelling, social activities for consumers.
• Part 7: Welcome to the Year of Location. Location officially matters. This will be the year that location teaches us about our consumers’ behavior, redefines how our customers shop, and enables us to provide more engaging marketing at the local level.
• Part 8: The Online Video that Just Won’t Go Away. Online video continues to be an extremely engaging medium. We dive into the secrets behind Funny or Die’s classic content, and how services like Ustream are bringing live videos into the equation.
• Part 9: This Year’s Twitter. While many attendees were on the lookout for SXSW’s “next Twitter,” it turns out the big breakthroughs were coming from some familiar places: Twitter and Facebook.
• Part 10: Tying up the Loose Ends. We send you off with some updates on QR Codes and Creative Competitions.

If you still didn’t get your fill of SXSWi, not to worry. We’ll be putting together a live presentation of the conference’s most applicable insights, which will debut at Upshot over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to contact us for deeper dives into any of the above topics.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled awesomeness on The Awesome Blog.

With all our talk of the Year of Location and mobile web browsing and in-store touch technologies, something as “old” as online video might seem like a quaint topic to cover in a SXSW Interactive recap. Of course, video has proven to be an extremely engaging medium for interacting with consumers, and brands have recognized the value of encouraging user-generated video content. So, even at a conference overrun with the digital elite, online video still commanded a number of panels to discuss what’s working now and what’s on deck. Let’s take a look.

Certainly, one of the biggest advocates of online video content is the comedy site Funny or Die (who just made headlines for their work with Hyatt’s latest B-to-B campaign). When it comes to content, FoD Creative Director Andrew Steele argues that the rules online are much the same as they are for traditional media (which probably explains why most of the site’s writers are drawn from the ranks of Saturday Night Live and the Upright Citizens Brigade). Steele argues that topical material, quality writing, and big names are your three best bets to give an online video a viral boost, although they admitted that swearing and naked women are also dependable fallbacks. But let’s keep it classy, shall we?

About getting those “big names” on board: it’s something that distinguishes FoD from their competitors, and having Will Ferrell as a founder certainly helps. While the site is happy to work with brands to write a clever campaign, it’s not exactly cheap to get the likes of Eva Longoria and Natalie Portman to shill for your product. But CEO Richard Glover points out that many of their frequent contributors are motivated in other ways. If a brand has a campaign that can help these celebrities achieve these goals, there’s a far better chance for arranging a partnership (and perhaps without that hefty pricetag). Some frequent contributors see the site as a resource for changing their image (see: Lindsay Lohan), and others are looking to promote their own products, but a surprising number of celebrities see humorous videos as an effective avenue for bringing attention to their charitable causes of choice. For instance, the video above brought together a roster of comedians young and old in order to promote the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Director Ron Howard said that a sketch like that would have normally cost a quarter-million dollars to put together, but since the actors were legitimately interested in supporting the cause, the video was online only nine days after conception, and for little more than the cost of airline tickets for the actors. For brands, these examples offer two compelling takeaways. For one, sometimes the best way to drive awareness for your cause campaign is through a heavy dose of humor. Secondly, that cause connection may be your ticket to celebrity participation. If you find a celebrity who shares an interest with your brand’s cause of choice, you may be able to get them to participate in campaigns that they normally wouldn’t consider. When choosing a cause to get behind, that’s something to consider.

Of course, not all great web content requires a script. Ustream’s founder Brad Hunstable came to SXSWi to tout the power of live streaming events online. The applications are obvious for sports and music, and Ustream has had particular success streaming exclusive, behind-the-scenes content for KISS shows and Jonas Brothers sets. Of course, they’re also willing to work with bands that don’t suck – OH SNAP! In fact, Hunstable thinks they’re best-suited for “middle tail” content with a sizable but perhaps non-mainstream audience (you know, like a Micro Community).

But, there’s even more potential on the other side of the live video equation. The growing ubiquity of mobile devices that can both record and view streaming video has made it possible for anyone to broadcast live from anywhere at any time. In response, we’re seeing the emergence of a number of platforms that bring these feeds together and supplement them with chat functionality and other social components (Qik and Knocking are two others besides Ustream that are gaining buzz). These services have now created the opportunity for local, isolated events to become experiences that are shared around the world. In a separate mommy blogger panel, the speakers recommended that brands should take advantage of these services for events that they’ve sponsored. Sending video-equipped consumers to cover these events gives your sponsorship added legs and activates your sponsorship beyond just the attendees. Moreover, for any events occurring in simultaneous places among a number of locations, streaming video services have enormous potential. A simple application of this service could be a brand like Corona compiling a variety of streaming videos from Cinco de Mayo celebrations across the country. Y’know, if we had any clients that’d be interested in that sort of thing.

[UPDATE: We saw some great examples of this during the iPad release day, a.k.a. the geek equivalent of Cinco de Mayo. Sites like Techcrunch used Qik to stream live interviews with all of the Apple-ites waiting in line for their new iPads, letting us all feel like we're part of the experience without, y'know, standing in line at 4am.]

We’re closing in on the end, but more SXSW Interactive coverage is yet to come.