Having caught you up on all things foursquare, you’ve now got a pretty good handle on how marketers are handling the rise of this location-based social network. 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 [...]

After all our talk of QR codes and Stickybits and barcode marketing, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a second to pat ourselves on the back here at Upshot. As part of Pacifico’s sponsorship of the US Open of Surfing, we rolled out a program via QR code for the event’s attendees. Better yet, [...]

Back when we introduced the idea of After the App, we suggested that with every brand under the sun jumping on the app bandwagon, smartphone owners were sure to start suffering from app overload. And, when these users eventually started pruning their app menus, only the most useful or most entertaining apps would survive the [...]

In last week’s look at how Consumer Controlled Conversations are impacting the hospitality industry, we mentioned that it’s a great idea to monitor and respond to the social media conversations of current guests. Of course, the only thing better than monitoring and responding is proactively influencing these conversations. To do this, you could follow the [...]

In our 10 Trends for 2010, we cautioned brands to be wary of the rise of Consumer Controlled Conversations. Now that consumers had become comfortable “expressing themselves” online, we felt they would increasingly use their (digital) voices to demand accountability, immediate assistance, flawless customer service, and other perks from brands and retailers. So, it’s not [...]

Hopefully you’ve been enjoying the first stage of the World Cup – we wouldn’t want you to have dropped the ball on that USA-England game. 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 [...]

Welcome to our latest Potty Posting! We tackle what Facebook’s new “Like” button means for marketers. See for yourself; the PDF is attached at the following link: What the Web Will Be Like with Facebook’s “Like” If you’d prefer a text-only version, keep reading below. And if you like the post, be sure to “Like” [...]

Among our 10 Trends for 2010, Delighting Consumers with Hidden Surprises was, admittedly, the longshot. It seemed reasonable to predict that many brands and retailers would tire of going bigger and brighter in order to break through marketing clutter, and would instead look to deliver small happiness in unexpected ways. However, we recognized that this [...]

While no one’s taken us up on our suggestion to save Chicago’s 4th of July fireworks just yet, that doesn’t mean we haven’t seen smaller scale examples of Hometown’s Heroism. In fact, for Chicago’s Big Shoulders Realty, this is old news; they’re in the middle of their third year of offering free neighborhood bike tours [...]

In our discussions about inserting gaming into everyday life, we’ve spent a good chunk of time discussing Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory” campaign. That effort included a user-generated component, where folks could suggest tasks that would be improved through gaming mechanisms. The video to the right was the winning submission, and asked: Can we get more people [...]