The fact is that Foursquare is already working with some local businesses in rewarding customers based on the data behind foursquare usage. See the following screen shot showing a bar in NYC rewarding the mayor with free drinks.

What a great opportunity for retail brands to reward customers and build loyalty programs. A recent study by Cone found that 58% of consumers who already engage with brands on the social web would be more willing to engage if incentivized with free products, coupons or discounts. I am surprised that more companies haven’t figured this out yet. A few places I frequent is Red Robin in Rivermark, multiple Starbucks in the valley, the Prolific Oven, Safeway to name a few. I would love to get discounted BBQ wings, a latte or two, soup & salad from Prolific and 10% off my next purchase from the grocery story.  And yes, I would tell others about it too.

Foursquare is growing. Check out their unique visitors as reported by Compete; and I think this just counts web traffic and not visits from mobile devices.

And as Scobleizer said a few months ago, Foursquare will be on Oprah in less than 40o days; and then the floodgates will open.

]]> http://www.britopian.com/2009/11/04/retail-brands-should-be-monitoring-foursquare-rewarding-customers/feed/ 0 http://www.britopian.com/2009/10/29/i-am-leaving-intel-joining-edelman-digital/ http://www.britopian.com/2009/10/29/i-am-leaving-intel-joining-edelman-digital/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:08:37 +0000 Michael Brito
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http://www.britopian.com/?p=400 I am not sure where to start so I will just write what comes to mind and hope it makes sense.

For my entire professional career, I have been lucky enough to work for some really awesome companies like Sony, HP, Yahoo! and Intel.  I don’t think I am anything special but I have always found myself to be at the right place at the right time; and of course, living in the heart of Silicon Valley doesn’t hurt either. And, while I have learned a lot from my experiences at these companies it really is time for change.

Intel has really been a special place for me. I have grown personally and professionally during my time there and have built some really awesome relationships. The entire web marketing team (Jessica, Melissa, Eva, Denise, Matt, Mike, Kim, Suzanne, Annie, Lisa, Doug, Carolina and Bob) has been instrumental in my growth and development. Thank you so very much from the bottom of my heart! It’s also been a pleasure working with the Razorfish team (you know who you are); you guys rock too!

Outside of my immediate team, there are also a few people that I need to acknowledge that have been nothing but awesome during my time at Intel – Sue, Cristina, Stacy, Kelly O, Holly, David L, Mark P, Jaime S, Steve B, Christina L, Victor, Brent, John C, Rama, Uday, Ken K, Kiesha, DAD, Sam, Leslie, Cyndi B, Sejal, Eric, Veneski, Alex, Tony, Alan F, Todd C, Josh and the IT guy down on the first floor of RNB. If I forgot to mention you, I am really sorry.

I also want to thank a few people outside of Intel who are mentors and friends; and who have counseled me on this decision to make a change. A big thank you to Shel Israel, Jennifer Leggio, Jennifer Shanks, Becky Carroll, David Veneski (Intel), Alexis Stack, Ted Murphy, Sumaya Kazi, Reem Abeidoh and of course my lovely wife, Kathy for all of her support.

I have come to realize that relationships matter in social media. I often write about this concept and mention it a bit when speaking at events; but this is so true and it’s because of this that I will be working with Edelman.  A few months ago, I was invited to speak on a panel by my good friend Tony Welch “Frosty” who works for HP. The other panelists included my close pal Angela LoSasso, Richard Brewer-Hay from eBay & Steve Rubel from Edelman. After the panel, we had dinner and talked about a variety of topics.

The next morning, I received an email from Steve introducing me to Rick Murray who is the President of Edelman Digital. From there, I have interviewed with multiple team members on the Edelman team. They all rock! In fact, I had dinner with the San Francisco team last night and the energy was electrifying.

I am joining Edelman Digital as a Vice President and I am excited to be working closely with Steve Rubel, Rick Murray and the awesome team in SF.  I am also proud to say that Bruce Eric Anderson (currently at Dell) will also be joining me at Edelman as a Vice President.  Bruce Eric and I had the chance to work together on Dell’s Digital Nomads where I contributed some blog posts on consumer mobility — we’ll be working on the same team at Edelman Digital.

I am confident that Bruce and I can bring the experience we have gained at Intel and Dell to Edelman clients in an effort to help them navigate through the social web from “behind the firewall”.

I also moderated a panel titled, How Big Brands Engage in Real time Conversations with Customers. The panelists included my close friends Becky Carroll and Tom Diederich.  Yes, the panel rocked, thanks to the panelists.

Lastly, had a huge opportunity to participate as Mixologist for the event, along with Stephanie Miller from Return Path, Jay Bear and Beth Harte from MarketingProfs. Our job was to attend each session in our respective tracks, take concise notes and then summarize some key takeaways so that the attendees can leave with actionable learning.

During my time at HP, I remember several discussions about launching a printer blog to engage with consumers. This didn’t go over well with some because at that time, HP was struggling with giving up control of brand messages. Since then, they have done an extremely good job embracing social media and have launched some really cool and innovative programs.

We all know that many brands still struggle with this concept of giving up some control of the brand; and are scared to death about allowing comments on their blogs/communities in fear of negative comments.

Problem solved, or unsolved depending on how you look at it.  Welcome Google Sidewiki!

Google Sidewiki allows anyone to leave a comment on any webpage out on the social web. It does require users to download a plugin and comments are stored to the left of a web page using an iframe. Here is a screen shot of Apple’s website; notice the comment from me on the upper left. Google also allows users to share the comment via Twitter, Facebook, email, a bookmark; and the comment will also show up on the user’s Google profile. Google Sidewiki is new and but widespread adoption of this product is probably just right around the corner.

Here is a screen shot of the Nationwide Insurance web site. Notice the comment with the green background. This is because Nationwide has claimed their webpage and have added some relevant content for sidewiki users. Any brand can claim their webpage and whatever they decide to write will be at the top of the wiki. Until then, anything goes; with one caveat. Google Sidewiki also allows users to vote up/down a comment based on how helpful the comment was to the readers.

Google Sidewiki should not be perceived as a threat to brands. It really is just another opportunity for brands to engage on the social web. Something else to consider which I just thought of is how these conversations will manipulate (or not) the search engine rankings for web sites; AND whether or not these comments will ever get indexed and start appearing in the results. Uh oh.

What I dig about Leapfish is that you can pretty much find every piece of content related to any specific search query. You can search Google, Yahoo, MSN and it also aggregates the top news from the AP, Youtube videos, Twitter trending topics, weather, etc. on the home page.

As usual, I did a search for “Michael Brito” and was delighted to see the common results I usually see when I Google myself; but also on the same page without any additional clicks I was able to see blog mentions, videos and images. It’s definitely a time saver and it has a clean interface.

What I would love to see and I am sure they are working on this as we speak is a the aggregation of twitter search, foursquare, Yelp and other social tools. Customization would also make LeapFish stand out from rest.

To learn more, you can tune in below and watch Robert Scoble interview CEO Ben Behrouzi as he talks about the future of LeapFish.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Brian Solis’s blog, PR.20 that highlighted the recent study conducted by Charlene Li of the Altimeter group.  The study looked at the top 50 brands and measured their level of engagement on the social web. The study also looked at the financial performance of each brand and the results revealed something very interesting.  The brands that engage with their customers more deeply enjoyed increases in revenue during the reporting period.  A closer examination reveals that the top brands, specifically Dell and Starbucks do an excellent job listening to customer feedback. More importantly, they are taking that feedback and acting on it. And in my opinion, that act alone has created memorable brand experiences for their customers.

CASE STUDY

On a much smaller scale, I wanted to share a case study that outlines the concept of listening and acting on the social web by my employer, Intel.

Back in May of this year, Intel launched Sponsors of Tomorrow; a marketing campaign that centers around the people who work for the company in an attempt to humanize the brand.  As a part of the campaign there was a commercial that aired on television titled “Your Rockstars aren’t like our Rockstars” that featured Ajay Bhatt (Intel Fellow and the co-founder of the USB).

In the commercial, while Ajay (played by an actor) is walking though the office, someone appears in the back holding open a shirt revealing a t-shirt with Ajay’s face on it.  The commercial was uploaded to Youtube (almost 1 million views to date) and shared across the internet on various web properties and blogs; and then amplified through Twitter. Within days, there was a huge outcry within these communities begging for Ajay Bhatt t-shirts. They were tweeting about it, commenting on the Intel blogs and the Youtube channel as well as in third party tech blogs.

So we moved fast and printed 100 Ajay t-shirts and decided to give them away using a contest on Twitter. We didn’t use the same t-shirt from the commercial; rather we printed t-shirts with the real Ajay Bhatt on it. The contest (more details here) lasted for the entire month of June. Once the t-shirts were shipped we asked the winners to post pictures of themselves with the t-shirt on to Twitpic and/or Ajay Bhatt’s Facebook Fan Page. Many agreed and they continue to upload their pictures to this day.

The human interaction and authentic conversation that happened and continue to happen today are what define a memorable brand experience, in my opinion.

Don’t believe me, well the story continues months later …

Last month, I attended Blizzcon; a conference for gamers and World of Warcraft enthusiasts in Anaheim, California.  While in the booth tweeting, blogging and interacting with the masses, a young guy walks up to me and says, “Hey, I know you. You are the Intel blogger”. Honestly, I was a little freaked out, and then he continued, “I was one of the winners of the Ajay Bhatt t-shirt contest”. We talked for about 30 minutes and then I snapped this picture to the left.

Even if the other 99 winners of the contest don’t remember their experience with Intel; at least one has and that’s all that counts.

Hat tip to Ray Hartjen (twitter/blog), my previous boss at Sony for reminded me about the Fish! Philosophy. Ahh yes, so what is the Fish! Philosophy you ask. Well, it’s actually a pretty cool book. It’s an easy read and it’s inexpensive; but the lessons learned are valuable and can be applied to building strong communities. The FISH! Philosophy includes four very simple, interconnected practices:

Be There is being emotionally present for people. It’s a powerful message of respect that improves communication and strengthens relationships.

Play taps into your natural way of being creative, enthusiastic and having fun. Play is the spirit that drives the curious mind, as in “Let’s play with that idea!” It’s a mindset you can bring to everything you do.

Make Their Day is finding simple ways to serve or delight people in a meaningful, memorable way. It’s about contributing to someone else’s life, not because you want something out of it, but because that’s the person you want to be.

Choose Your Attitude means taking responsibility for how you respond to what life throws at you. Once you are aware that your choice impacts everyone around you, you can ask yourself, “Is my attitude helping my team or my customers? Is it helping me to be the person I want to be?”

Building a successful community is more than just being transparent or authentic. Yes, these are two very important virtues but in order for a brand to make any impact at all in the social web, they have to be believable. That means “being there” and learning, listening and having real life conversations with people (some call them customers). It means being able to “play” and have fun with the people that you care about and that also care about you. It means “making their day” or I would prefer to say “delighting your customers”. There are numerous ways you can delight your customers and it could start with simply saying thank you publicly. “Choose your attitude” is a no brainer. Be positive and outgoing; attitudes like that have a tendency of rubbing off on others and when your customers are happy, you will stay happy.

Another way to think about it is what I have written on my linkedin profile which I try and live by daily:

I believe that marketing is good; and if you love your customers they’ll love you back and tell others about it. I believe that business results are critical but should not be the driving force behind connecting with people. I believe in being real, authentic and human. I believe that consumers are real people with real passions. Let’s start treating them that way.

Relationships are hard, just ask my wife. There will be ups and downs and pokes along the way. Your customers will not always be happy with the decisions that you make. But if you have invested time and energy nurturing the community, that level of trust will never be broken. So when you say, “hey customer, you have to try this new XYZ product. It’s awesome and you will love wearing it” … well, your customers will be listening, just may believe you and then maybe, just maybe go out and buy one.

Here are the details if you are interested in attending.

Hotel Valencia (Cielo Lounge) @ Santana Row
September23, 2009 | 5:30 PM to
RSVP Here

There will be free drinks and a DJ spinning some beats. If I can get a few more sponsors, I will try and provide some grub too. What’s going to make this event more special is that my good friend Brian Solis will be spending time with us and personally autographing his new book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations”. I read the book a few months ago when it was first released and it was enlightening for me as a marketer. It’s for anyone and everyone (not just PR peeps) that want to learn and understand how a brand can engage (the right way) with people using the social web. Guaranteed learning for sure. We will be selling the books for $25 a copy and donating the profits to the Anissa Lopez Foundation / George Mark Children’s House. Looking forward to seeing you.

Here is some info if you feel like sponsoring this event.

I had a really awesome time at the book signing party this evening at Hiller Aviation Museum in San Mateo. Here are some pictures of the event. Hope you enjoy.

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