In January, 2011, Starbucks launched its Mobile Card payment program available on most smartphones. SMART. No doubt you’re already on your phone at 8:30 in the morning while ordering a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte, so it’s easy to flash your “Touch to Pay” barcode and be on your way. The app replaces your reloadable Starbucks card (while keeping your rewards intact), and you can preload it from your bank account within the same screen.

With the release of Google Wallet, users can now pay with a simple tap at Mastercard paypass terminals. For now, this is advancement only for those with Google phones…and a Citi Mastercard. But, with this technological groundbreaking device, users are also able to receive offers and store loyalty points via the app.  We’re attached to our phones, so what better way to reach us directly when we’re making a transaction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shopkick offers rewards for simply stepping inside a store and scoping out merchandise. It displays deals and discounts close in proximity to your location. The more you peruse, the more points are earned for redemptions ranging from clothes to electronics.

While cashless-ness becomes the norm, we can only assume that consumers will rely less on the benjamins, but let’s not forget about Future Fear. A lot of emphasis is placed on convenience and practicality when we look at technological enhancements. It’s our job to find the perfect balance between convenience and trust.

What we can gather from our own shopping habits is that we rely heavily on the convenience factor, no doubt about it. We’ve become increasingly comfortable with everything being accessible through our phones. We can purchase a Groupon, find our way to Alaska and back, and even count the steps we take around the office with our smartphones.

“What? I can’t just show you the e-mail, I have to print it out?!”

As marketers, we should reach our consumers as soon as they walk into the store, making it harder not to refuse a great deal on the very same phone used to swipe and pay. It has been reported that 20% of smartphone users have compared prices while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, 15% of smartphone users have redeemed a mobile coupon (ladies more so than gentlemen). Let’s take advantage of these time-saving, less paper-wasting social platforms that deliver instantaneous results without hassle. Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, so creating more convenient methods of in-store redemption and offers will put us ahead of the game—and the checkout line.

What will it take for YOU to go CASH-LESS?

What seems like a simple program opens up a world of possibilities for developers or companies with an eye on business apps. While B2B apps in the mobile space are nothing new (Blackberry held dominance in this space for eons, and Apple has a strong number of business apps in the AppStore), mass deployment has always been a headache. Increasingly, iPhones and iPads are more pervasive in business and educational institutions, and I.T. departments are becoming more comfortable supporting them at an enterprise level. Coupled with Apple’s pending iCloud service, deploying apps across tens, to hundreds, to even thousands of devices at once will become easier than ever.

This is good news for both B2B and B2C marketers. Imagine getting entire marketing and sales teams enabled with consistent access to CRM systems, marketing automation software, and analytics dashboards delivered via mobile. No more worries about Mary not having the right version of the app, and Bob having to email her a report on the road. With Bob and Mary looking at the same app and data, they’ll be able to collaborate and make decisions in real-time.

And while mobile apps used within an enterprise can help fuel productivity, volume purchasing will also help businesses serve their customers better. The ability to create and publish an app and deploy out to a large customer base is an exciting prospect. Providing apps that helps clients communicate, place orders, provide feedback, or improve customer service offers clear competitive advantages (read: sticky). Such tools open the door to deploying targeted marketing messages, along with product updates and information that’s relevant and specific to key customer segments.

It will be interesting to see how companies embrace this new program, and what the early wins will be.

So how did they succeed? The answer is almost as simple as, well, chewing gum. Be bite sized; be snackable; be awesome.

People aren’t looking for a deep engagement on the phone, so Falling Stars keeps the gameplay simple, short and fun. Randomly draw lines and drop water to the lines to create limitless original melodies and share those melodies on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, a game wouldn’t be awesome without solid (yet minimal) visuals and ear-pleasing audio—qualities that help Falling Stars stand out in a competitive app store.

While it’s hard to say if this app will sell more gum, it can’t be denied that Kraft Foods has created a positive brand experience and is generating awareness for a new product that has potential to live on for months.

Falling Stars by Trident Vitality Gum is free on iTunes for compatible versions of the iPhone, iPad and iPod.

With everyone jumping on the QR code bandwagon, the wrong tactic in the wrong place was bound to happen. While 2D codes offer a great real-time call-to-action, it’s time to take a step back and think about the overall communications strategy.  When and where is the best place to engage consumers with your brand?

How about on television? The Daily Show with John Stewart ripped CNN’s recent use of the mobile barcode tactic for encouraging their viewers to leave the broadcast for exclusive content during their Republican presidential debate. On the flip side of that, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon has done a great job using smart codes with new bands—offering links to videos or additional audio. This one makes sense. Fallon’s fans are early adopters of the technology and highly involved and engaged with his show (just ask his 3.5 million Twitter followers).

What it ultimately boils down to is that marketers need to think about their target, when they’re receptive to receiving messaging and when they’ll actively engage with the brand across the medium or technology. The true challenge is up to us—people are going to decide to adopt or ignore the technology based on what they get on the other end. If they snap and get relevant and compelling content, we all win. I’ll be waiting at the bus stop with my phone out trying to see what that truly “mobile” ad was for.

The video above is the latest installment in our Upshot Smartshot webinar series, and complements our recent Potty Posting that introduced the concept of marketers with Twitterphobia. This 15-minute episode goes a step further, assuaging marketers’ three biggest fears about the service:

• What should you say?
• What should you do?
• What should you make?

If you’ve missed any of our previous Smartshots, scoot on over to our YouTube playlist for the whole series. Of course, you wouldn’t have missed those if you’d just follow us on Twitter already, at twitter.com/upshotblog. Since you’ve now vanquished your Twitterphobia, you’ve got no excuse!

But the four-wheeled madness doesn’t stop there. Check out the above race from Hot Wheels, featuring a three-dimensional obstacle course projection-mapped on a building in Sydney. (Thanks to Karlin from MUSE for the tip.)

Speaking of races, check out the above clip from a Cornetto projection in Istanbul. In the midst of a big ol’ street party, the brand projected an interactive casual game where onlookers could compete against each other using their phones. As if an interactive projection didn’t have enough stopping power! It’s great to see that, no matter how many projection examples we share, someone always seems to be raising the bar on what’s possible with this medium.

By far, the number one activity on smartphones is mobile gaming. Games are the most downloaded apps in both free and paid categories in Apple’s App Store. Recently, adMob (a leading mobile ad network owned by Google) released the results of a survey that revealed games are also the most popular activity on tablet devices (think iPad), beating out email, search, social and shopping.

With games being all the rage, why aren’t more brands taking advantage?

One could argue, “sure, there’s a market for games, but what can a game really do for our brand? It isn’t selling products. Also, aren’t the app stores flooded with games?”

Consider:

1. The Audi Driving Challenge, a game developed for the iPhone and later for the iPad, has driven more traffic to the Audi website and more real-world test drives than any other digital marketing tactic*.
2. Barclaycard’s Waterslide Game was downloaded 2 million times in its first week of release, and has since been downloaded 17 million times. Version 2 has been downloaded nearly 10 million times. This is from a financial services provider.
3. Cirque du Soleil’s official iPhone app (developed by Upshot) includes a game with an active leader board of tens of thousands of players. (By virtue of being on a leader board suggests players are playing the game more than once in an effort to beat their score and others.) Because the game is only part of the experience, each time it’s played, users are (potentially) exposed to Cirque content.

While a game may only passively be driving brand or product awareness, players have the potential to be exposed to a brand anywhere from a few minutes to hours depending on how much they enjoy the game. If the game is designed to be social (I.E. inviting friends to play) it can go viral.

Also consider that on average, only 25% of a mobile user’s apps are paid for (vs. free downloads). If a brand offers a free game, most consumers aren’t going to make their decision to download based on whether or not it’s branded. The choice becomes simple: it’s free, and it’s fun to play.

Branded games also enjoy the long-tail effect. After a 30-second spot has long faded into the ether, a game can live on for months or even years. Sure, it might not enjoy the popularity of its initial release, but will continue to be downloaded indefinitely, costing the brand nothing to keep it alive in the app store.

Lastly, there’s a reason developers keep cranking out new games: gamers are always on the lookout for the next challenge. Sure, one might get stuck on Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies for longer than they care to admit, but eventually they look for other stuff.

What’s the rule for creating a great branded game? Simple: make it awesome. It’s no secret brands are taking advantage of gaming mechanisms in numerous forms of marketing (highlighted in our 2011 Game On! trend), but I suspect lots of brands tried online games before mobile games rose in popularity, only to conclude, “we tried games, but they didn’t go so well.” Sure, but were they fun? You don’t have push the envelope of 3D graphics for mobile or use cutting edge augmented reality. It simply has to be fun (nice graphics help, but are secondary to game play). Give players that little rush we all get when we get lost in a game—even if that rush only lasts for a minute, and they’ll play it again and again, and tell their friends too. Once your game is awesome, then consider clever ways to push your brand message—unlock product discounts when players reach certain levels, give away virtual representations of your products as achievement badges, or use brand elements as part of the game itself such as locations, characters, products or settings.

Has your brand had success with branded games, mobile or otherwise? Please share your comments.

*Taken from the session, “Behind the Curtain: Secrets of Mobile Application Wizardry” at SXSWi 2011.

• Social validation is the primary motivator on the web. We share on Facebook in order to receive comments and likes. We post to Twitter with the hope of being re-tweeted. We upload to Flickr so our photos will be favorited. Keep this in mind when considering how to motivate consumer behaviors.
• Why does 4chan stimulate such… um… “creative” output? Because there’s no identity and no archive; i.e. it’s anonymous and ephemeral. It’s a survival of the fittest of ideas, where the content is more important to the creator.
• Anonymity can be a powerful stimulus for creativity. The cost of failure is high when it’s tied to your real identity, which impedes risk-taking.
• When selling in boundary-pushing innovations, recognize when the pushback is emotional instead of rational. Data will not overcome emotional doubts.
• The Old Spice Guy’s “Response” campaign is perhaps the greatest digital campaign ever, but the creators don’t see it as an exercise in digital. They describe it as an integrated success story. It worked because the character had been established across a variety of media channels, including good ol’ television.
• Still skeptical about advertising in social games like Farmville? Keep this in mind: the average weekly audience of Farmville is 31 million players. For context, the average weekly audience for American Idol is 26 million viewers. Social games are the new soap operas.
• Did you realize that Hispanic consumers are far more likely to use smartphones than other ethnic groups? In fact, a VP at Nielsen went so far as to say that mobile is the entertainment access point for Hispanic consumers.
• What’s the right equation for generating word-of-mouth? According to General Mills, it’s all about expectations. If you don’t meet them, you generate negative word-of-mouth. If you do meet them, there’s no word-of-mouth. It’s when you exceed expectations that you generate positive word-of-mouth .
• If you trigger the right sequence of “baby steps,” you can generate significant behavioral changes in the long run.
• The challenge for traditional brands in the modern world is that branding has been all about perfection and maintaining control. In today’s world, information is ever changing, consumers are real people rather than idealized targets, and brands are seen as authentic when they’re imperfect.

Mind blown? No problem. We’re pulling together all the pieces from our SXSWrapup tomorrow.

Click the image below for the full-size Cracking the Code infographic!

Before we headed out to SXSW Interactive, we tipped you off to foursquare’s new partnership with American Express (at the very bottom of that post). However, in all the hubbub surrounding SXSW, it took a while for the details about that partnership to emerge. Now that more information is available, it’s only fair that we tie up those loose ends.

First things first: this is only a test. If this were an actual application, you would have seen a foursquare special that looks like the image above, in which you could add this deal to your (pre-registered) AmEx with the tap of a button. The deal would be done as soon as participants used their card; no need to show the server, no need for the server to enter the discount, and no need for the merchant to figure out how to redeem the offer. Everything happens seamlessly on the back end, with the consumer receiving his or her deal within 3-5 business days. While the test wrapped up at the conclusion of SXSW Interactive, it sure sounds like AmEx is planning on rolling this out on a larger scale in the coming months.

But the most eye-opening piece that emerged about this partnership? It wasn’t built on foursquare’s API [oops - updated in response to Tristan's comment below] There was some playing-nice between foursquare’s API and the API from American Express… wait, American Express has an API? Yes, American Express has an API, meaning that developers can produce all kinds of value-added services that work on the back-end of American Express cards. That’s definitely something worth watching in the near future.

Oh, and don’t worry, the folks at AmEx are no dummies. Their API doesn’t share transaction data, card numbers, or merchant info, which also means that anyone who loses their foursquare-enabled phone is not at risk of exposing their AmEx number. (They are at risk of revealing their top scores in Angry Birds, which may be more traumatic.)

So, yeah, that little coup was bigger than the big names involved. We’ll be keeping a very close eye on this partnership when it eventually rolls out. But, for now, we’ve got much bigger things to talk about regarding the location story…