Gray Dudek

When Foursquare came out I was seriously into it. Grabbing badges, setting new locations, coining in on points, etc, etc…

I held down 10 Mayorships to be a Super Mayor and unlocked some where in the region of 15 badges. Ok, not serious numbers for either but for what?

That’s the point that really escapes me now when I look at Foursquare.

Some say it’s helpful exploring new cities as the To Do’s and Tips kinda come in helpful. I sort of agree but are you going to spend £100 on a meal out at restaurant recommended by a Foursquare user (maybe the restaurant owner!) or are you going the check on TopTable – my vote goes to the latter.

Some say in very ’social media orientated cities’ (such as Chicago I was told) Foursquare is super useful to keep in touch with the like-minded.

So it’s a social tool for socialrati? Hmmm…that probably wouldn’t be well heard by Naveen Selvadurai one of the two creators.

I’m not a glass-half-empty sort of person by nature but I have to say that I am struggling with Foursquare personally at the moment. The thing that keeps me going is that one of my colleagues ousted me as the Mayor of the agency and that pissed me off – so I am back at it to boot him back out!

On a serious note though I can see huge benefits within the UK to using Foursquare when more multi and single site retail businesses become fully engaged as have Starbucks, Dominos, etc. Until we see more on the platform people will remain struggling with the “Check-in for what reason” point of view.

I was browsing eMarketer today and found an article telling me that 75% of US companies have a Social Media strategy compared to 2009 where 52% of companies were operating without any strategy. Obviously I gravitated towards it as it was a pretty intriguing headline. Below is one of the graphs I grabbed:

So that sounds good right?

Well that depends on WHAT the strategy actually is. This is the more important deep-dive question and those kind of ‘look how good things are’ headlines sort of piss me off as they are generally misleading.

To put it in context every company has a business plan – that doesn’t stop some of them hitting the wall or screwing up royally. That’s because their business plan is fundamentally wrong. The fact they have one is merely housekeeping.

The same can be said for marketing plans and sales forecasts – we all have them but that doesn’t mean they are right.

However, on the flip side I must say that with 75% of US companies having a strategy of some sort is better news for people like me (and probably you!) because it means that these 75% are realising they need to do something in the area.

I’d like to return to that very post in 12mths time and see a sub-line such as ‘12mths on, X% of them got it right too’…

And they are and apparently they are increasing their spend on social media too:

Excellent – where’s that Sunseeker brochure, I fancy a new tub to sail in…

Ok so maybe not the most exciting set of check-in’s on FourSquare (that’s my fault!) but nevertheless the idea of WeePlaces.com is good. It gives you a time line of all your check-in’s from the last 12mths and puts them into a nicely constructed video that can be shared.

I can think of a number of good reasons how WeePlaces could help some of my clients – but that’s an idea I will keep for myself for the moment!

Just be careful if you’ve been places that you checked-in at to get the points but didn’t ’share’ for some intriguing reason…this tool does not keep any of those check-in’s a secret…

Zoom out so you can see the whole of the UK and then reply the video…neat.

Gray Dudek’s Foursquare by WeePlaces.com.

Spotted this the other week and just thought it was a great piece of work. It’s not absolutely clear on why it was done within the film but it was created by Conscious Minds on behalf of Levis as they try to come back as brand we all consider ‘cool’ using various social and digital efforts.

All that aside, it’s just a seriously clever piece and credit to the editor(s) for having the patience to stitch it all together…

As usual Aleksandr Orlov is extremely endearing as a character and complains about everyone getting Meerkats confused with Markets (note: I must say I blame him for that as before his advertising campaign started I have never confused the two…)

Regardless, it’s the usual slick execution and has become more polished as the time has gone by. I think this is nice as the client is clearly seeing the results and therefore investing more but the traditional style of the Meerkat videos was to me much more compelling and ‘believable’ (if I can use that word about a stuffed puppet) than the beautifully recreated sets we see in the ad’s now.

Check out the latest video:

…and now check out an original video:

But my opinion to one side how has the interest in the whole Compare the Meerkat / Market campaign been performing from a social perspective?

Is it still in our favour? Are we still talking/blogging/tweeting/etc about it? Or has is become just part of the ‘funky’ (sometimes irritating) insurance sector advertising campaigns?

I checked it out on Social Radar and here’s what I found:

So from the above trend chart we can see a huge embrace of the Aleksandr Orlov character and his stories starting back in July 2009 and since then a slow decline in the number of mentions that either he or Compare the Meerkat and indeed Compare the Market are getting across the social sphere. The query used was pretty basic I admit so I’ve probably missed a few posts and Tweets here and there but the trend still remains representative I would suggest.

However, from a shakey beginning (where pretty everybody misunderstood WTF the ad was about and for that simple reason hated) the sentiment towards the campaign has grown over time and maintains a positive feeling towards it. However with declining volumes of conversations I wonder if the latest ad will hit the mark.

Well I suppose in one way it matters not really as it’s the final installment of Aleksandr, Sergei and all the Muskats…for now at least…