Innovation in PR – Geo Location September 7, 2010

By BodenPR staff

Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla. We on this end are enthralled with all related to geolocation and from a PR perspective it’s a fantastic tool – not only is it innovative and engaging it also has a superb measurement quality to it. Read on.

So, we were developing a PR campaign with a geo location component in Miami for a major car company and as such got on the phone with SCVNGR. If you don’t know who they are, check them out. These guys rock.  You go places, you check in, you do challenges, you earn points, you get free stuff.

When I heard these guys speak at #Nokiatalk, a blogger and social media summit held in Miami, and which we had the privilege of being a part of (shameless plug #1: Nokia Latin America is our client), I thought of how absolutely neat the app was and – well we started to look  into how it could help us increase business – and awareness - for our clients. 

We thought of our travel clients and thought it would be a superb app to promote destinations (to both tourists and permanent residents of a city). For example, let’s take Miami. What if Miami, as a destination, launched a SCVNGR Hunt with the SVNGR app where we call on all Miami citizens to check in at certain places (maybe during special times of the year – Miami Spice Month, Miami Spa Month), play certain challenges and get freebies, points and other neat stuff in return? Clues could be full of what makes Miami special – the nooks and crannies that not everyone knows, the major hotels that we all love, the restaurants, the parks.

Why not launch the SCVNGR HUNT in London, Montreal, Buenos Aires and give people clues about Miami and challenges that relate to Miami – winner gets free trip and other items? Innovative campaigns relating to a sunny, fun filled location (thinking of the ad campaigns featuring a palm tree, white sands and clear blue skies I used to stare longingly at as I waited for the train during those long London winters) might get the Brits quite excited – and generate some buzz in the press and in the social media sphere in the process.

As we continued to study the benefits off a campaign involving a geo location app, we noticed two key elements:

- The registration process allows the team to qualify potential buyers or brand ambassadors, depending onthe campaign objective

- It is highly engaging and innovative - you can link the brand to the types of contests you develop, the places the SCVNGR takes you to, the objective of the hunt – opportunities are endless  

True, some of them have only developed apps for certain phones and glitches still exist, but it is definitely worth studying and looking into.

So, to end on a bit of a light note, since we were talking about Miami, what places would you highlight on a SCVNGR hunt? We on this end love the Fontainbleu, Pizza Volante in the Design District and South Pointe Parke. If you haven’t visited, check them out and in the meantime, download the SCVNGR app – it’s really quite fun.