{"id":3870,"date":"2011-03-03T09:38:03","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T04:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manuprasad.com\/blog\/?p=3870"},"modified":"2011-03-03T09:38:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T04:38:03","slug":"brands-going-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2011\/03\/03\/brands-going-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Brands going places"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So, almost a year after I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.manuprasad.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/early-bird-rewards\/\" target=\"_blank\">blogged here<\/a> about Cafe Coffee Day&#8217;s potential gains from Foursquare, they have become (as far as i know) the first Indian brand to get an <a href=\"http:\/\/foursquare.com\/cafecoffeeday\" target=\"_blank\">official page on Foursquare<\/a> and have <a href=\"http:\/\/foursquare.com\/venue\/4960877\" target=\"_blank\">special offers<\/a> for 4sq users. (Bangalore outlets). I plan to drop in soon!\u00a0Meanwhile, I remember the DM conversation then, with the person handling the <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/CafeCoffeeDay\" target=\"_blank\">CCD Twitter account<\/a> and\u00a0touching upon\u00a0the problems of scale that would arrive with a platform like Foursquare. But now we have tools that address <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialmediaexplorer.com\/social-media-marketing\/five-tools-to-manage-social-media-for-the-franchise\/\" target=\"_blank\">franchise needs<\/a>, so I hope that can be addressed too. Anyway, good on CCD, because it&#8217;s not easy for an organisation of that size to be an early adopter marketer. Also good on the agency for (probably) getting them to do it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With Foursquare and Facebook Places, I think that brands whose product\/service experience is intrinsically tied to retail outlets are perhaps closest to a kind of interaction utopia I have in mind. Here&#8217;s why.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With every platform advancement, the customised interaction potential has increased &#8211; from mass media and the static web to social web, location based services, apps and technology like Augmented Reality. But even now, given the tendency to\u00a0aggregate &#8216;Like&#8217;s and followers, I sometimes feel that &#8216;social&#8217; as it relates to friends and followers&#8217; overrules &#8216;social&#8217; as a relationship between brand and consumer. That&#8217;s a dichotomy that few brands have acknowledged or addressed. Conformation!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And that&#8217;s why I feel retail brands on 4sq, Places etc are near to that utopia &#8211; because it allows real-time interaction and context at the place of experience. Social is only a topping, and something that the user will scale by connecting his friends\/followers to the experience. The brand\/platform just has to play along. Technically, you could say it is possible on FB, Twitter too, but there the Like\/follower currency is way too prevalent, so it is easier for brands to get sidetracked. (If we go by a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.istockanalyst.com\/article\/viewiStockNews\/articleid\/4872155\" target=\"_blank\">recent report<\/a>, brands will eventually find that it&#8217;s not really getting them anywhere)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Meanwhile, just like FB and Twitter, platform protocols and constraints for brands also apply to apps and location based services. And that&#8217;s why, at this level of my imagination, I can only imagine utopia (for non retail brands) as brand &#8216;controlled&#8217; interactive sensors attached to each product we consume. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These shifts would hopefully drive more brands to <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2011\/02\/24\/you-not-your-competitors-define-your-destiny\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29\" target=\"_blank\">define their own destiny<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">until next time, CCD, may the foursquare be with you \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, almost a year after I blogged here about Cafe Coffee Day&#8217;s potential gains from Foursquare, they have become (as far as i know) the first Indian brand to get an official page on Foursquare and have special offers for 4sq users. (Bangalore outlets). I plan to drop in soon!\u00a0Meanwhile, I remember the DM conversation <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2011\/03\/03\/brands-going-places\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15,2538],"tags":[1754,2765,89,2999,1273,3045,608,266],"class_list":["post-3870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brand","category-social-networking","category-ideas","tag-augmented-reality","tag-cafe-coffee-day","tag-facebook","tag-facebook-places","tag-foursquare","tag-franchise-social-media","tag-social","tag-twitter"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}