Time Magazine has come out with a list of bad inventions, which includes both the location based network Foursquare and the (very successful) Facebook game Farmville.

Foursquare finds itself on a list that includes Betamax, Asbestos and Agent Orange, with Time Magazine calling it “Just another tool tapping into a generation of narcissism, with which you can earn badges for checking into your local Starbucks more than anyone else.”

In fact, Foursquare is arguably a prime example of a network where the hype far outstrips the actual usage.   Mashable says Foursquare is nearing one million check ins a day.   Sounds impressive, but compare that to Twitter where the number of tweets a day was around the 53 million mark in late March according to Sysomos.

Is Foursquare a colossal waste of time?  Certainly, it seems to attract even more criticism than Twitter did in the early days.  This post by my former colleague at Cow PR, Mark Perkins is a fairly typical reaction to it.

And from personal experience, when I went to see Flight of the Conchords at the Hammersmith Apollo the other month, a measly five people had checked in (the venue has a capacity of 3600+), from an audience you’d imagine would be much more likely than the average to be smartphone users.

3-4 ways Foursquare can be more than a gimmick
The thing is, Foursquare can be useful, it’s just that most people don’t realise how.   Really there are three concrete ways it becomes a utility as opposed to a gimmick:

1 – There are circumstances when you are in a large group of people, where it’s good to see where they all are.   At the March SXSW geek fest in Austin, it was useful to find out who was attending what talk or seminar in quite a large area around the conference centre.   A lot of people I know specifically used Foursquare to let others know what they were up to.

2 – It can work well as a location based guide in self contained communities.   Harvard University’s Foursquare deal where both students and visitors can use it to navigate the campus is interesting – it serves a real purpose

3 – Retail promotions can work.  In his post Mark jokes about people whose ambition is to be ‘Sheriff of Nandos‘ in Uxbridge (Nandos = a Portuguese themed fast food chicken chain / Uxbridge = an anonymous outer London suburb).   Yep, being Mayor of Nandos in Uxbridge would be pretty sad…unless Nandos made it worth your while of course.

So, I’m one of those suckers spending £20 ($30) or so a week in Starbucks.    If I got 50p or £1 off each time I went in for being Mayor, would I do it?  Sure I would, over the year it would add up to quite a tidy sum.

It’s also a way for smaller retailers, or groups of retailers, to promote themselves.   Our local coffee shop, opposite the DLKW (and Rabbit) offices, Bou Tea, has a free pastry before 10am promo.  And I could completely see a scenario where somewhere like Spitalfields or Greenwich market in London launches a badge where you get some kind of freebie for checking into X locations.

Then there is a fourth benefit:  As a brand is that Foursquare can help with SEO, at least temporarily.

In the first three months before we’d established any real online footprint at Rabbit, our Foursquare location was on the first page of Google when you searched for us.   And back when we were still working with Cow PR in January, we immediately created a Foursquare location for the ‘pop up’ Heinz Cafe.   In the week when it was open and people were searching for it, that location was one of the first things they saw.  Without it, it would have been invisible online during those crucial first 1-2 days.

In fact ‘what’s the point’ is a question that’s asked more so outside the US.   Laurence Borel has an interesting post where she reports back from a recent visit to the US.   Checking in, says Laurence, is completely different over there to over here.     On Facebook and Twitter, as well as Foursquare, Laurence observes that business are far ahead of us in making social media check-ins both useful and interesting.   It remains to be seen how long we’re going to be playing catch-up…

Flickr Image Credit – Marshall Astor

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I rarely put posts up where I talk about myself, but this will be the exception.

That’s because from today I’ve got a new job.  The former digital division of Cow has been hived off into a separate agency, Rabbit, which I now head.

So, nine years after being one of the team that started Cow, I’m back in start-up mode!

Cow (where we remain part of the group) has done some incredible things, going from a £10,000 loan in 2001 to agency of the year in 2008, while remaining completely independent.   That’s thanks to the amazing group of people working there.

The awesome Louise Doherty has come over from Cow Digital to help me make Rabbit happen and we’re drawing on five more Cows in Cape Town and London – really we can be as big as clients need us to be.  But, if with Rabbit we achieve just a fraction of the success that Cow has had, I’ll be happy!

Why a separate agency rather than a division?   Three reasons really, two commercial and one personal.

I know there’s been chatter that this year could see the end of division between digital and traditional agencies, but from experience, we’ve lost out on business due to some brands still preferring to give online business to someone they saw as a specialist.

Having said that, we have backgrounds in traditional comms and marketing and don’t believe in working in silos.   Whatever we develop will be designed to have traditional media legs as well as online ones.   In fact, ideally we want to become the lead creative agency in campaigns.

Then there are certain advantages in being able to build up our own client base.   Some clients we’ll of course share with Cow.   Others will be our own.

And from a personal point of view? I just fancied trying this all over again and concentrating on something that’s become a specialism of mine.

We like carrots, not sticks

Finally why Rabbit:

Because of the Cow link we wanted to choose an animal, but we took one that was as likely to be undomesticated as live on a farm.   Then there are the obvious Internet connotations with ‘rabbit, rabbit’ and ‘breed like.’

Want to find out more? Check us out online, follow us on Twitter, or send us a mail – hello at therabbitagency.com….and, oh,  did I mention exactly how excited we are about all this?!

Image – Svadilfari

One of my personal inspirations when being one of the original team that set up Cow was Andy Law’s book ‘Open Minds.’    In it, Law talked about the creation of ad agency St Lukes in the 90s, which broke the mould by truly standing for something radical – in this case the idea that the people who provide the ‘sweat equity’ for an agency should also have a say in how it’s run.

The PR Warrior (Trevor Young) in Australia reminded me of that today in his post, ‘if you don’t stand for something, you are nothing.’  Trevor says that we need to create a story or narrative around brands that goes beyond the actual products – and it has to be authentic.

Trevor also posted this manifesto created by online rental market place Rentoid.   Full marks to them – it’s inspirational, meaningful, devoid of corporate and brand speak, puts its people at the centre.   A lot of us could learn from the sentiments expressed in the presentation!

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Now here’s a subject close to my heart, the continued usefulness or otherwise of the age old press release. Publisher Ragan Communications and PollStream carried out a survey in the States, which found that only 49% of PRs think ‘it’s as useful as ever’, while 33% thought it was a ‘necessary evil.’

Ragan’s Lindsey Miller says press releases are becoming ever less useful due to – yep, you guessed it – social media. According to Marketing Charts, Ragan’s take is that communicators are using social media to get around ‘canned’ information and to target and reach journalists. And obviously via Twitter lists is yet another way that can be done.

I guess it all depends what you define a ‘press release.’ Does it really have to follow the conventional standard for it to be classed as one? For example, some companies have started using blog posts in place of standard releases – Twitter is a prime example. It’s something that makes sense in certain circumstances but to my mind, a corporate post is a release of sorts.

Image – Bohman

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