A Whole New World - Life Beyond Facebook and Twitter

This week's learning took my knowledge into a realm I very much was not familiar with. Foursquare and Facebook places I know a bit about, but have never participated, let alone the other tools including discovery engines, QR codes and AR. Add on to this how they relate to public relations and could be integrated into a campaign, I had some serious research to do.

For me, choosing one, singular learning from the week is difficult because I learned to much, so I'm going to go through a few key points of my learnings:

Learnings from participating in a location-based service - Similar to one of the articles we read this week here, I have my hesitations about participating in a location based service from a safety perspective. While I did learn this can be done anonymously, I'm not sure this is something I would continue to use personally, but I do see value in it from a PR perspective (read on for more on this).

Location-Based Serivces - My biggest learning about LBS is that there is a huge potential for influencers to become a part of PR campaigns to reach specific demographics. The more people that follow these influencers and who see where they are checking in to, can create a lot of buzz about a campaign.

QR Codes - QR Codes allow for instantaneous access to information and is also very useful if there is a visual or video component to the campaign, allowing users to interact. QR codes are also a great way to track information about who is buying specific products and certain demographics.

Discovery Engines - They key learning here (and I have never heard of these before) is the amount of up to date and trending information that can be found instantly. I think there is a great opportunity for PR campaigns to go viral using sponsored articles/videos or it can also happen organically if the campaign is great enough.

Augmented Reality - While I understand this is expensive, AR has the potentially to add a great new dimension to PR campaigns. From the research that I've done, it appears that are being used a bit more extensively in some industries, including fashion and there are of course others that still need to catch on, but I see great potential in AR, especially in helping a campaign go viral.

In my exploration of this unknown world of QR Codes, AR and Discovery Engines, I came across some great examples of PR campaigns that have used these platforms to cream successful campaigns.

Catch a Choo

Fashion forward shoe brand Jimmy Choo used location based service Foursquare for a launch campaign in 2010. The campaign was created to launch the expansion of Jimmy Choo into sport footwear and took place in London, England. The concept was such that one pair of new Jimmy Choo trainers would check in on Foursquare at various store locations and followers would have to get to physically get to the location first in order to win a pair of new Jimmy Choo shoes. I thought this was a really unique and innovative way to launch a new line of footwear. Not only did it incorporate many forms of social platforms (Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare), but it as very successful in driving foot traffic to stores. Once customers were in store and someone had already won the shoes, there was potential for purchase by the consumer, which would result in increased sales of the new trainers.

GM Chevy Cruz and Volt

The article 30 Social Media Predictions From 30 Social Media Pros is from January of 2011, mentions that companies and clients will be looking for more and ore social media opportunities that can be measured and provide data. QR Codes was one of their examples because of the way they allow brands to track information, including which demographics and numbers of users. A great example of uses of QR codes and LBS for PR is a case study I found about Chevy. In an effort to build brand awareness and engagement of the Chevy Volt and Cruze at the SXSW festival they first used Gowalla to see how consumers would interact with the brand via LBS. When festival goers, who were subscribed to Gowalla, landed in Austin Texas, they received a welcome message from Chevy and some were randomly offered a free ride from the airport to their hotel in a Chevy car. I thought this was an interesting way that demonstrated how sponsored messages can be utilized for a LBS. In addition to this, once at the festival, Chevy attached QR codes onto pre-production models of the Cruze and Volt. When scanned by a phone, the QR Codes launched a micro-site full of information about the key vehicle features of both cars. 

The initiative was very effective and through the tracking they were able to do from the use of the QR codes, they recorded that there were 370 scans of the QR codes and blog posts, tweets and other articles mentioning Chevy's use of QR Codes at SXSW, resulted in 1,680,230 impressions. The buzz about the Volt and Cruz also resulted in over 13,000 tweeted mentions in the nine days of the festival.

Harry Potter Video Game & Augmented Reality

I came across a really unique use of augmented reality to get gamers excited about the launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 video game. You can read about it here, but in short, as an incentive to get gamers to purchase the game, developers created an AR component that would allow buyers of the new video game to go to the website for the video game, hold the cover to a webcam and Lord Voldemort would come to live. Additionally, those who have part 1 of the video game could hold both covers up to the web cam to see Harry Potter and Lorde Voldemort begin battling. Quite a unique concept that was sure to get the attention of gamers around the world. For a sneakpeak at what the experience looked like, check out this video from YouTube and you can also access the gaming website where the AR is available here.

What are your thoughts on life beyond Facebook and Twitter? Do you think it is just a phase? For me, I will continue to follow these platforms and their evolution and would love to utilize one or some of them for a future campaign.