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!

Crowdsourcing’s been an understandably controversial topic over the past few years, leading to heated debates about whether the wisdom of the crowd is superior or inferior to the input (and output) of professionals. While there’s evidence to support both poles of that debate, we happen to think that this dichotomy is a bit silly. Our only two choices are complete submission to the masses or holing up with experts and ignoring outside input? C’mon. Thankfully, the most innovative presenters at SXSWi have all dismissed this debate in their day-to-day operations. Instead, they’ve synthesized the knowledge of experts and the insights of the crowd in order to generate truly useful innovations. From Twitter to Gowalla to foursquare, we kept hearing a common refrain: these services’ most popular features were the product of detailed-oriented professionals gaining a deep understanding of how their audiences were interacting with the products they’d created. Sometimes these insights came from enabling their users with significant (but not unlimited) power, and trusting them to fill in the gaps in the service. Other times, users would push against (or completely circumvent) the limits of the systems, so the creators learned to restructure the rules to accommodate these behaviors. Let’s see what each of these approaches look like in practice.

One great example of empowering the crowd came from a less-expected source at SXSW: General Mills. Their head of Social Engagement explained how the brand created a variety of tools that encourage and enable content creators. For example, General Mills’ created the opt-in network My Blog Spark to provide bloggers with exclusive content that they could use in their posts, ultimately making their blogs more compelling for readers. (The topics range from food to home electronics to auto care, showing that this is far more than a site that just shills for General Mills’ products). But perhaps no one empowered the crowd as much as foursquare, considering that the service currently offers over 250,000 places to check-in… and the company doesn’t have an outside sales team. In other words, each place in this database was crowdsourced, with relevant data provided either by eager foursquare users or the venue owners themselves. That sounds impressive to us, but CEO Dennis Crowley’s not going to be content until that number hits the 5 million range. Aim high, right? But, you don’t get a twenty-fold increase by sitting back and hoping the crowd picks up the slack. Crowley and friends are unveiling a dashboard of tools for participating merchants that provide them with unprecedented data on their customers: who shows up most often, who’s most responsive to deals, who always shows up with friends, and who don’t come around here no more. By empowering their most important participants, foursquare gives the crowd an irresistible tool in exchange for growing the service’s database of places and specials.

On the other hand, sometimes the crowd is wisest when it’s breaking the rules. In a fascinating panel called “Stop Listening to Your Customers,” Mark Trammel spoke about his experience as a design researcher in coming up with the new Twitter site. As suggested by the panel’s name, he’s not a big fan of surveying his users (because people tend to give unintentionally misleading answers), preferring instead to observe users’ natural behavior in context. We might not think of this as crowdsourcing in the traditional sense, but it’s clear that Twitter’s (successful) new layout was very much the product of observing the crowd’s use of the site, rather than having experts in a room brainstorming about ideal features. (Trammel also threw out a number of gems about effective behavioral testing; our favorite was “Sprint to a functional prototype, test over and over, then iterate.” In other words, it’s fine if the setup is ugly – and Twitter’s testing setup most certainly was – as long as you’re testing users’ behavioral responses to a service’s core elements.) Gowalla’s designers found similar successes by closely watching the way their users were interacting with their service. We might expect that users mostly check-in at bars and restaurants, but Gowalla observed that their users were regularly checking-in at less-expected sites such as landmarks, stadiums, airports, and amusement parks. In response, the site created beautifully-designed “stamps” for check-ins at venues in these categories, culminating in a series of customized stamps for the rides at Disney parks (shown below).

So, is crowdsourcing really the problem here? Or, the ultimate solution? No, and no. The crowd does indeed exude wisdom from time to time, but it often takes experts to recognize, unearth, and apply these smarts. Finding ways to extract the best elements from both sides of the continuum is your best bet for rich, actionable insights.

Stay tuned for Part 9 of our SXSWrapup!

Earlier this month, Facebook quietly unveiled Facebook Questions to individual users (and shortly thereafter, Brand/Page owners). Facebook Questions allows consumers (or brands) to easily create instant polls and gather feedback on any topic, status or idea.

Okay, wait — before you roll your eyes, or run away screaming about Facebook’s increasingly dizzying pace of rolling out “tweaks and new tools” — just hear us out on this one. Yes, Facebook Polls have been around for a long time. (One of my personal favorites is the “Which Golden Girl are You?” poll.) But the new Questions functionality, with its super clean interface and oh-so-easy-to-create process, is, in our humble opinion, a great tactic to activate consumer engagement and a solid tool in your brand’s Facebook arsenal.

To use the Questions functionality, page owners simply type a ‘question’ directly into the status update area, along with their chosen ‘answers’ and presto, you’ve created a mini-focus group, or a consumer engagement mechanism, and perhaps even a little crowdsourcing experiment. Page owners can create the questions, as well as several predefined answers, in minutes. Now, stop that snickering — there are in fact, some very meaningful questions that many brands that’ve spent the past two years gathering “Likes” should ask of their fans. How about: “What product should we offer in our next coupon circular?” or “What should change about our product line?” or maybe even “What flavor ice cream should we create next?” For those that desire less restrictive ‘answer’ options, page owners can also allow fan responders to add their own answers, which then become part of the poll.

Overall, think better, friendlier Facebook Polls – minus that intimidating and annoying Permissions box that was previously required for earlier Facebook Quiz applications. These new polls are instantly pushed out via the Facebook Feed (as well as pushed virally to the friends of anyone who answers a question). The voting takes place right within the main Facebook Feed area. No need to go off to some hidden tab; just vote and Fans are on their way. One additional perk for brands using this tool is the open nature of the Question polls – once published, anyone (brand fans and non-fans alike) can participate in them. It’s a pretty slick tool, easy to use and something to keep in mind as you’re thinking about digital Facebook tactics.

Will this be abused by friends and brands alike? Um, probably. But this is potentially a great tactic when used in conjunction with a larger program. Questions functionality becomes really powerful if brand page owners take the information gathered to the next step: using the content and feedback generated via the poll to actually influence brand actions and product offerings. While it’s pretty new (the only brand poll we’ve noticed so far is the age old “Coke vs. Pepsi” and Old Navy’s fashion questions, pictured above), we’re most excited about the potential of this new feature because it provides an easy (and cost effective) method for brands to give their Facebook fans something exclusive and highly valued: a direct, visible voice in a their favorite brand’s business.

Just think, coming soon to your supermarket aisles might be products emblazoned with: “Try our new scent: Chocolate Dipped Apples, as picked by our Facebook fans!”

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…

In Part 1 of our SXSWrapup, we noted that despite the annual hype-fest and prognostications for every SXSW, there really wasn’t “a killer app” coming out of this year’s conference. To give that statement some context, think about the two services that are universally hailed as the most “killer apps” to ever come out of SXSW: Twitter and foursquare. Twitter fundamentally changed the way we communicate online (by imposing length limits), the speed at which these conversations take place, and the ability to build further services right on top of this data (through an aggressively open API). Likewise, foursquare fundamentally changed the way we think about the relationship between social networking and location, invented a brand new data point (the check-in), and legitimized gaming mechanisms on an enormous scale.

In other words, the bar is pretty high to be a “killer app.” That’s why it’s okay that this year’s big story – the emergence of the Group Texting category of apps – isn’t really blowing anyone away. These are undoubtedly useful, they address an important consumer need, and, in the end, they may have the potential to be more widely adopted than Twitter or foursquare. So, “killer” or not, let’s take a closer look.

Group texting is exactly what it sounds like: a service that functions much like a “reply all” for text messaging. Users choose the peers that need to text each other about given topic, and add those people to a central list. When invited users send texts, pictures, or similar content to that list, that information gets dispersed to the whole group. For instance, if you have a group of friends that like to play pickup soccer games, you could create a list and shoot out messages when you’re in the mood to organize a quick game. If you’re trying to coordinate your group of friends at Lollapalooza-sized festivals, it sure helps to shoot out one update instead of contacting everyone individually. And if you were to attend, say, a Hilton developers conference (hint hint, Hilton team), attendees would find it very useful to opt-in to group texting lists for networking purposes, conference updates, and discussions that are pertinent to their industry. Better yet, these lists can be as permanent or as ephemeral as needed. Some services choose to build-in this expiration date up front (as seen in the image of GroupMe above), while others can be canceled as soon as the list’s usefulness has run its course.

As always, we STRONGLY encourage you to download these apps and try them on your own. No explanation on our end can compete with trying these services yourself, even if you delete them after a week. There are already lots of options in this space, and they are sure to undergo significant changes over the next few months (especially Beluga, which was recently acquired by Facebook), but we can make some initial judgments based on their current configurations. We’ve been using Beluga with our team here at SXSW, and it’s definitely been helpful for improving productivity and coordination. SXSW attendees who are more focused on the “extra-curricular activities” have also been advocating Fast Society.

But the service that’s most captured our attention is GroupMe. We like the fact that when you create a group, that group is assigned a phone number that, with a push of a button, can generate an instant conference call for all of the list’s members. We like the fact that users can choose to share their real-time location, so that group members can find each other even if they’re in an unfamiliar region. Then again, many of these features are available from other group texting apps.

In fact, the thing we like most about GroupMe’s is something that runs counter to the idea of being SXSW’s “killer” app – the fact that you can participate in the service without using an app. While there are apps available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users, list members can also interact via text messaging. (Yes, that’s right: someone at SXSW created a service that also includes people who don’t have smartphones.) We love that element for its inclusiveness, especially since the kind of networking applications we’re envisioning can’t afford to be compromised by incompatible devices or different levels of tech-adoption between participants. Better yet, this also means that when the smartphone users run into areas with poor data coverage, they won’t lose touch either (GroupMe actually prompts users to drop down to SMS functionality when it detects poor data coverage.) And while GroupMe is only currently available in the US, the SMS/text option certainly suggests that they’re well-positioned to expand their service internationally in the near future. And for many of our clients, we think that’d be “killer.”

Be sure to check in tomorrow for Part 3 of our SXSWrapup!

[UPDATE: For more information on the foursquare / American Express partnership mentioned at the bottom of this post, click here.]

SXSW Interactive starts tomorrow, which means the battle for blogosphere buzz will be starting shortly… ah, hell, it’s already been going on for a couple of days.

Category-wise, the big buzz is focused on group texting apps, which are pretty much what they sound like: services that enable users to identify groups of peers (often temporary) with whom they want to swap texts, images, videos, events, real-time locations, and more. With hordes of trend-setters and trend-trackers (us included!) heading down to Austin for a week or two, these services are sure to help coordinate meetups, idea swaps, networking, and more during the time when everyone’s in town. There are some obvious implications here for our travel and B2B clients, as these services could be used to coordinate everything from networking professionals to families vacationing together. We’ll be tracking how these services fare over the course of the conference, how (or whether) they differentiate themselves, and what unexpected implications will emerge. For now, we’ll encourage you to peruse a brief posting on Mashable if you’d like to see where the frenzy stands.

As for specific services, the first one to land a big blow has been… foursquare? Again? Clearly, these guys know how to capture the attention of the tech crowd, and they’ve managed to do so with a lengthy blog post about the release of foursquare 3.0. While they’ve got a lot to say, let’s focus on what’s most relevant to us folks in the marketing world.

We’ll start with the fact that foursquare has grown to 7.5 million users who have checked-in 500 million times over the past year. Man, that’s a whole lot of data. If only someone could apply that information in a relevant way to encourage exploration. That someone turns out to be foursquare themselves, and the biggest piece of their big upgrade is the Explore tab. In addition to their classic approach of highlighting the closest venues to your real-time location, the Explore function enables users to also filter by a variety of more refined factors. This is partially enabled by venue tagging (looking for places with fireplaces? got a thing for wings?), but that’s something that’s basically becoming a cost-of-entry to the location-based services’ space. Now, here’s where those aforementioned 500 million check-ins come into play. If you combine venue tags with the aggregate information about your check-ins (and those of your friends) – such as the types of venues you patronize, how loyal you are to those spots, etc. – you suddenly have the ability to receive some extremely relevant recommendations. As we mentioned in our earlier discussion of foursquare’s Pepsi/Safeway partnership, check-ins are increasingly becoming a valuable proxy for aggregate behavioral data that smart marketers can manipulate to provide extremely relevant offers. For instance, foursquare can identify your “areas of expertise” in this new version; if you attend a lot of burlesque shows, you’re probably an expert on the art of tasteful teasing & tassels. If your friends are considering a dive into that world, isn’t your check-in history a valuable asset? Damn right it is.

The next big change worth noting: foursquare’s bringing the “social” back to location-based social networking. While the battles for venue mayorships have certainly been effective for frequent users, these check-in frenzies tend to exclude the service’s more casual users from reaping the benefits of foursquare specials. That’s about to change with foursquare’s new types of specials (shown in the image at right), including deals that target groups of friends checking-in together, first-time visitors, or swarms (i.e. certain thresholds of users checking-in all at the same time). For brands that are looking for innovative promotional mechanisms, foursquare just armed you with a pretty powerful tool.

Oh, our coverage of the foursquare frenzy wouldn’t be complete without their biggest PR coup: landing a partnership with American Express. The gist of the deal is that users who link their foursquare accounts to their AmEx accounts can get receive exclusive deals just by using their card (starting with a variety of “spend $5, save $5″ deals). Interestingly enough, these deals don’t require a foursquare check-in to be redeemed, nor do the purchases automatically check you into venues. Instead, the deal is being touted for its seamlessness – consumers automatically receive the rewards thanks to foursquare’s work on the backend, while the participating businesses benefit because their salespeople don’t need to handle the redemptions. (Our hunch: foursquare benefits too by growing their user base beyond the 7.5 million mentioned earlier.)

[UPDATE: For more information on the foursquare / American Express partnership, click here.]

We’ll be keeping an eye on these developments, as well as the deluge of information that’s about to spill out of Austin, over the next week right here on The Awesome Blog. Let us make sense of the madness for you – be sure to follow us on Twitter and/or subscribe via email through the link at the top right of this page.

Once marketers buy into Brand Patronage, there’s an understandable temptation to go after the biggest stars on the biggest stages. From a PR perspective, you’re pretty much guaranteed a big splash if you grab yourself a Lady Gaga or Black Eyed Pea (both will be making appearances in subsequent Brand Patronage coverage). But, remember that Brand Patronage isn’t just about half-assed testimonials from megastars; rather, it’s about forging partnerships where both the brand and the artist can flex their creative muscles in a collaborative effort. For this to work effectively, marketers must be careful about choosing artists (and a medium) that are the right fit for their brand.

That’d explain why you don’t see Macallan scotch working with, say, Katy Perry. In fact, the brand isn’t working with musicians at all. Rather, they’ve created a series called The Macallan Masters of Photography, which enlists some of the sharpest shooters in the field to tell the story of the Macallan production process. The latest installment features a project from Albert Watson, in which he is tasked with highlighting the Spanish sherry oak casks in which Macallan is aged. Fortunately, the brand didn’t add any other stipulations to the project; even Watson remarked, “The freedom and encouragement given to me allowed the creation of a visual journey demanding complete artistic integrity.” Watson settled on a story about a couple traveling from a Spanish forest to Scotland, and the end product (as seen in the video above) certainly evokes luxury, refinement, and distinction.

Of course, highlighting the wood is a pretty straightforward way of bringing the brand into the exhibition. But, there’s also more subtle branding being done through the choice of the medium. Photography is a slow process (in terms of setting up the shot), has a rich heritage, and focuses on minute details when it’s done right. These elements are certainly consistent with the brand attributes that Macallan is trying to cultivate, so their choice of both Watson and the medium of photography are appropriate for the brand. The campaign also supports amateur photographers with a contest, which encourages consumers to submit their own photos to be judged by Watson for a chance to win Nikon equipment. It’s a picture perfect extension to an already-compelling campaign.

But Macallan isn’t the only marketer peering through a viewfinder for inspiration. The Dali Museum, which recently opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, also turned to photography to promote (and help fund) the new attraction, although their campaign presents a stark contrast to the slow refinement of the Macallan project. For one, the Dali execution takes the traditional camera out of the mix, opting instead for a twist on the mega-popular Hipstamatic iPhone app. While the standard version of this app allows iPhone users to add all kinds of analog effects to their photos, the museum’s version (named the GoodPak – shown in the image below) expands these features to include elements of Dali-esque surrealism. They’ve also got their own user-submission contest, judged by – wait for it – John Waters. (C’mon, you know you chuckled at that.) While there are some other goodies included in the GoodPak, the most good comes from that fact that all proceeds from the Pak’s sales will go toward the museum. For more info on the app, head this way.

The Celeb Spotter from Ok Magazine is most definitely not one of those cases.

Yes, the iPhone app from this British tabloid taps their star-struck readers to crowdsource the real-time locations of Prince William or Posh Spice or whatever. If you catch a tabloid-topping celeb sipping tea in Chelsea (note: I clearly have no idea what celebrities like to do in the UK), you can add the data point to the collective map and let the hordes come a-runnin’ (are you worried, Zuckerberg?). While we can’t help but respond to this with a beaten-down “ugh,” the marketer in us does need to commend the brand for creating the kind of serendipitous experiences we discussed in a recent post. And in general, Celeb Spotter uses location in the manner we keep advocating: to make their marketing more relevant and meaningful for their consumers. Even if their consumers are superficial, celebrity-obsessed tools that are signaling the decline of civilization.

Alright, we need to get that taste out of our mouths. Surely, there are more important applications of real-time crowdsourced location data? Thankfully, yes. A US soldier named Jonathan Springer has developed an iPhone app called Tactical Nav that applies the Celeb Spotter idea to tracking the Taliban in Afghanistan. When soldiers have information about the locations of their enemies (or other objectives), the app empowers them to add this data to a collaborative map that other soldiers can access.

This same spirit of DIY location has popped up from an equally unexpected source: a Baltimore-based graffiti artist by the name of Gaia who has (geo-) tagged his own (graffiti) tags. His personalized Google map shows the locations of his current street art (as well as locations where his work has been removed), and includes links to Flickr photos of the relevant pieces. For brands that operate in the travel and hospitality space, or for any brand that could legitimately curate a tour of lesser-known locales, there’s lots to learn from this unlikely source.

An example that may be more applicable to our non-combat, graffiti-resistant clients (as well as our Cause with Effect trend) comes from a Northern Californian fire department that created an iPhone app called… well, it’s called “Fire Department.” While the firemen could benefit from a bit of creative inspiration when it comes to names, they’re perfectly fine on their own when it comes to life-saving innovation in the location space. As shown in the video at the top of this post, the app sends alerts to CPR-trained citizens when there’s a need for CPR in a nearby public place. The “nearby” element is crucial, since humans have about 10 minutes to survive after their heart stops beating, so locating a CPR-trained person in the vicinity can literally be a matter of life and death. Ahhh, knowing about this application  makes it so much easier to deal with the Celeb Spotter drivel up top. Hopefully other brands will consider ways to turn real-time location data into apps that really make a difference.

Nonetheless, Visa’s already pitting the two fanbases against each other on Twitter, sponsoring a site that aggregates tweets about the game. The site displays this data in a variety of formats, letting visitors filter the information by hot trending topics, geographic location, or which fan base is most actively tweeting (as shown in the image above – pick up the slack, Steeler nation). Wisely, Visa’s not sitting back and praying for a viral hit – they’re fueling the feuds with a series of trivia questions (hey, look, the Bears made that), contentious debates, and… well, mustache showdowns. On top of that, they’re featuring tweets from NFL players, sports media, and more in the sidebar. That’s a whole lot of content managed neatly in a single spot, which’ll become even more handy as the game progresses on Sunday. In other words, its a run right up the middle for our Driven by Data trend. If you can curate an enormous amount of data and present it in an organized (and visually compelling) manner, the numbers are bound to be on your side.

Visa isn’t the only big-name brand turning to Twitter in their Super Bowl buildup. If you ever needed proof that social media’s gaining legitimacy, mentioning that Mercedes-friggin’-Benz is running a promotion called The Tweet Race should do the trick. For the past week, they’ve had four teams across the country virtually making their way to Dallas fueled by the tweets of their fans. Observers can tweet about their favorite team (or retweet that team’s announcements) to help push the virtual cars towards Dallas, while a series of challenges give each team a chance to gain extra ground. (The teams are getting some help from Twitter-savvy celebrity “coaches” like Serena Williams and Pete Wentz.) The first team to make it to Dallas wins four distinctly non-virtual C-Class coupes. We ran a quick Radian6 search and found that the contest has generated over 12,500 tweets already.

While this is definitely a fun example of our Game On! trend, it’s not too far removed from the Uniqlo Lucky Counter campaign that we’ve previously raved about. But, there’s something else about the Mercedes campaign that really caught our eye. Considering the mechanics underpinning the race, Mercedes needed to ensure that they were getting participants who weren’t just savvy with social media; rather, these folks needed to be influential. So, Mercedes considered the Klout scores of each applicant, which measure the true reach of a given tweeter. (Hint: it’s more than just number of followers. Instead, how often do people retweet the things you’re sharing?) Our War on Whiners trend argued that marketers in 2011 would get smarter about who really matters on social networks, and this is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that when Mercedes throws their hat into the social media ring, they do it in the smartest way possible.

[By the way, for everyone on foursquare, be sure to check-in to the "promoted Superbowl venue" and get your badge. Oh, don't worry, we'll get to that little bombshell in a subsequent post.]

Is it a little bold to equate the check-in with being the “king” of emerging marketing trends? Perhaps. But now that the tweet has gained a (perhaps reluctant) legitimacy, that leaves the check-in as the most hotly debated element in social media. And with good reason – as we’ve hammed home with our Find Your Place trend, location has the potential to provide contextual information that can drastically improve the relevance of your marketing, and ultimately create more meaningful engagements with consumers.

Now, if we can only settle on a way to get that location data in the first place.

We’ll be the first to admit that the check-in process is flawed. While check-ins are (currently) our best option for protecting users’ privacy and ensuring that they’re not accidentally sharing their location without their approval, they’re also annoying, disruptive, and easy to forget. Each of those problems poses a significant obstacle for checking-in becoming a mainstream phenomenon, but those obstacles also beg the question: if checking-in is such a pain in the butt, why are millions of people doing it? Clearly, they’re getting something out of the check-in. (The dorky among us would call this a “value exchange.”) Fortunately, a couple of discussions at Mashable and The Daily Marauder have uncovered some intriguing answers to these questions. We’ll save you from having to wade through the whole argument by highlighting some of the most relevant points for marketers.

For starters, why do people check-in to locations? Because they want deals, of course (as anyone who’s had an array of free suds at their local bar can attest), but to also enable serendipitous experiences – you know, the “crazy seeing you here!” interactions that allow us to unexpectedly reconnect with lost contacts. This becomes especially applicable at large events, where huge numbers of attendees are checking-in together. So, when you’re considering event marketing executions, the idea of encouraging serendipity can produce delightful surprises for your consumer.

There’s another often-ignored reason to check-in to locations – doing so creates a personal record of where you’ve been. This is especially relevant when consumers are traveling (“What was the name of that BBQ place I liked in Nashville? Oh, Jack’s Bar-B-Que!”). But, other than the nifty PepsiCo-Safeway arrangement we recently highlighted, it’s surprising to see a lack of campaigns that apply users’ histories in more insightful ways. As that Pepsi example shows, the spots where your consumer hangs out say a lot about them – yes, we’re looking at you, “mayor” of the tanning salon.

There have also been a rise of check-ins that have nothing to do with locations. Consumers can check-in to sporting events, TV shows, or even brands. Some of the motivations are the same: serendipitously discovering that your friends are watching the same show, or the having a personal record of you watching a sporting event that you know will be memorable. But this is where the concept of badge brands comes in – and we’re not referring to the badges you earn on foursquare. We’re referring to the same reasons that people Like a brand on Facebook – many of these brands say something about who you are. Are you a Mac or PC? Liking one or the other symbolizes your views on technology, and sharing your check-ins is no different. If your brand has this kind of badge cache, ask yourself if there’s a way to apply it as a movement via location-based services.

So, check-ins probably aren’t the ultimate solution to the location question, and someone (foursquare? Facebook? A service that’s not yet invented?) will inevitably figure out a better solution. But for now, they provide a peek into consumer psyches that marketers dismiss at their peril.

P.S. Thanks to the Daily Marauder for the images used in this post.