Starbucks announced yesterday that they’ll be offering a mayor special to nationwide all mayors of their individual stores. The special is a $1 off to the mayor for one of their however-you-want-it Frappuccinos. That’s a pretty good discount considering it’s about $4 for a tall Frappuccino. The offer lasts until 6/28, but the people over at FourSquare think that Starbucks will continue to experiment with more mayor specials, and maybe other loyalty-based promotions through FourSquare.
After reading this, I now know that FourSquare and location-based gaming and marketing services are here to stay. I have been touting the importance and significance of customers competing over arbitrary titles and gaining points for visiting their favorite stores and restaurants, but few people listen to me when I tell them that it will catch on and marketers will start paying attention to these location-based applications. Well, is Starbucks big enough for you? Starbucks is not the first major brand to partner up with FourSquare, but it is DEFINITELY the most significant, because think of how many times you visit your favorite Starbucks per week? It’s hard to get competitive over being the mayor of your favorite fine-dining restaurant, because you may only eat there once a month. But with Starbucks, we visit their cafes almost every day, so this is a genius move by Starbucks to offer a mayor special. A lot of Starbucks customers are also very tech savvy, because many of them sit in Starbucks and work on their computer or mobile devices. Starbucks obviously knows this, so I really think they’ll see the statistics of the amount of people “checking in” to their stores skyrocket.
Will this be the catalyst for large and small businesses using location-based marketing strategies like mayor specials on FourSquare? I think it will be, and if you own a small business or work in a company that thinks this might be a fun marketing experiment for your company, visit FourSquare and click on their link “Businesses: Use Foursquare to reward your customers“.
(img credits: Thomas_Hawk)
