Wow, great post and image! Its funny how a few weeks ago the argument was that this wasn't appealing to the masses and it is quickly shifting toward a fear of inundation. Incentives are definitely motivating people to use these services and the benefit is two-fold for businesses, increase in sales and invaluable data businesses can pull from LBS. User benefit because many were enjoying the services before they offered incentives so what a great bonus!

Last week there was an editorial about FourSquare becoming the Google of LBS. I think what will make these service more appealing is if GoWalla, Whrrl and others continue to stay in the game, each carving out their own niche. GoWalla's recent deal with the NJ Nets is different than anything I've seen on FourSquare. Whrrl's society rewards serve those that like the feeling of community.

The Old Spice man has challenged the creativity of the marketing world this week. Hopefully location based services and the businesses that use them will also continue to get more creative.

Jill
@jillmcfarland

Great post Mike. Loyalty programs need to be careful. I like this one because it's a first of its kind, but agree that if my entire feed is full of friends promoting their toothpaste every time they go to CVS, it's going to ruin the noise. Not sure if I would prefer a model that rewards for recruiting new customers instead - but I could see that being just as noisy. Thanks for the thought provoking post as always...

Wow. Where to begin? This article is spot on. And I agree with the majority of commenters who say this is where LBS marketing has to go to become relevant for non-techie audiences. So instead im going to chat about something loosely related.

Loyalty programs have always had the fortune of a clear incentive and the misfortune of an inconvenient tracking vehicle. I can't tell you how many SuperCuts business sized cards with random initials scribbled on them I used to have in my wallet. I always seemed to just take another card and try to merge them together after awhile. Those punchcards typically only served the purpose of a tiny whimper of delight when you remembered you had a card for the putt putt course for a free game right before you paid for one. But the reality is that was the only putt putt course you had in your town.

Drugstores and supermarket chains changed things with the keytag but now we move into an era where we are discussing the abuse from the campaign not the overall marketing case for the plan itself. We can have this discussion because we have removed the friction. No more worrying about lost cards or forgetting about the incentive. No more saying the cashier didnt scan it in correctly.

In the case of Tasti DLite, you can't really argue free ice cream or the willingness people will have to crowd their activity streams. So instead of rehashing everyone elses points I would like to say that I believe these types of campaigns will become a reality but will fizzle out quickly.

My rationale follows the behavior trends in the beginning stages of the LBS themselves. Remember when it was so exciting to be mayor and to win badges? And this was way before there were special offers attached to it. Then we all won badges and mayorships, lost some, half-heartedly pretended we didnt care but really did and in some cases won them back. Well, after awhile we didnt care anymore.

My point is, after the first free ice cream, we wont care anymore.

What do you think?

First comment is on the image - very creative!

First Point: I truly believe the brand's message will be perceived as nothing more than noise. Our brain will quickly become an LBT filter and ignore these tweets. Regardless of how we (or twitter and facebook) filter these messages, the brands message is lost.

Second Point: Businesses and brands should focus on building creative campaigns. Creativity leads to virality which is more powerful than flooding Twitter feeds. Example - The person with the most creative ice cream combination and flavor name will win a month of free ice cream. Post a tweet with a picture and the name of your ice cream.

Third Point: Most major brands realize there will be backlash from social media circles if they abuse Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Final Point: It's our responsibility as social media users to not abuse the service! When you check-in at Starbucks every morning and post this to Twitter, I immediately consider an unfollow. I am also more likely to push the unfollow button if you are being incentivized to tweet.

-Mike (@peekaboomobile)

Great post Mike. At the end of the day, how each brand adds or takes away from the community will speak volumes and their efforts will yield the fruit they deserve. Designing responsible programs that reward customer loyalty and social activity while still operating in the spirit of the community requires not only creative thinking but the right approach from a culture standpoint. As you have pointed out, polluting these networks would not be beneficial for anyone long term.
We’ve found that many customers are taking advantage of the ability to randomize their automated TastiRewards messages. Some of which were actually provided by customers. Additionally, some locations include links to coupons so that friends can benefit as well. Stay tuned for the next round of exciting dev items that will move this program even farther away from where no one wants to be.

It's usually not the product,channel, promotion that fails, its the way they are put to use. Tasti D Lite has it right as they did it from the ground up. Others should do more than copy, they should adapt the core idea to suit their customers, their brand, their purchasing environment.

Though a solid effort, sound effects would have brought this "info graphic" to the next level for me.

@Aaron and @Simon I have a "loyalty-in-a-box" solution all mapped out for my clients. It does similar to what Tasty DLite is doing and feeds their SCRM beast. I agree that this idea is brilliant and the future of location. However, after a conversation with Jim Storer about community and location, I had a dream of the above vision.

If every QSR and retailer creates a similar play, our twitter and Facebook streams could overwhelm us with loyalty-based-tweets (LBTs). For some this could be signal, but to most I think it would be noise that could drive them away from the platforms. Facebook has ways to ignore certain types of content, but it is a lot tougher in twitter.

Mike - great post. I was actually talking about this yesterday with some folks at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium (I sat on a panel focused on ROI of social media and location-based services). Personally, I think what Tasti DLite is doing is brilliant. But I also understand your and Kat's concerns about filling our friends/connections streams with junk. To that end, giving people an ability to edit their checkin's or to have 20+ rotating updates that are amusing when someone auto-checks in will help reduce the annoyance factor. And to Simon's point, this IS the way of the future of biz meets LBS.

Thanks for making me think.

Best,
Aaron | @aaronstrout

Thank you Aaron.

A loyalty program should be about making your most valuable customers feel special. Not about introducing more noise into their lives. What about this intrusiveness feels like Tasti DLite is saying "We think you're awesome"? It sounds more like they're saying "We think you have no filter."

The part that is special is this: We know you are connected and we thank you for letting us use your power with additional points.

Another way would be to reward people based on how offers from their accounts resonate with their audience. So for instance, Kat you tweet out a 10% off coupon which is seen 200 times and gets 50 responses and 10 new people in the program. So I give you swag, points, badges or whatever for your time. You can then use your points to create additional offers. If you are not influential, you need to wait to build up more points. This way you can make sure that everyone who is tweeting / Facebooking is actually relevant to their audience and not bothering them.

Spot on. The key to remember is this type of lbs marketing/advertising is coming. So instead of being annoyed by it, we need to figure out the correct market applications. There is little doubt this type of brand interaction can have a tremendous impact on both the brand and consumer...just going to have to spend some time to figure out what that symbiotic relationship looks like.

Agreed. This is another example of push marketing in the new pull world. The brand uses the Social Graph of customers to push out their messages. Not exactly something I would recommend to brands. The value for customers is very questionable.

And, please, let's stop calling these initiatives "loyalty programs". Loyalty cards barely drive any loyalty, they are just coupon cards. Nothing wrong with that. But none of these cards affect any true loyalty or affinity for the brand.

Mike
Actually I think this is exactly where Social Location Sharing has to go if it is to become mainstream and have an relevance to non-geek users. It has to go beyond the checkin. Top Guest is a another great example of how Social Location Sharing data can benefit customers by providing extra rewards that are added to an existing rewards program. Not everyone who uses these tools is a gamer and the gameplay is at best fairly thin. So it won't hold attention for long. Expect to see a lot more of this type of extension in the coming months.

I want "JetBlue Rewards" everywhere just like you do, but I do not want it to be so noisy that it spoils the conversation.

I like the idea of loyalty card programs tying into LBS. I think something like topguest.com is an interesting evolution of what can be done with LBS. I like the idea of a digitized loyalty card that ties into LBS, it cuts down on steps for the patron and provides more information for the property.

However I don't like incentivizing people sharing content with points like the example above. It is effective to a point but it it really feels unseemly. There are a few companies in this space that put together programs like the one above. (Socialrewards.com comes to mind.) I get the same gut feeling with them as I do with Izea... that isn't a compliment.

Well said Kevin. The only thing I would add is, people will most likely be comfortable with brands posting into their social streams if the end result adds value. The infusion into the stream has to be more than "free advertising" for the company.

What do you think of my response to Kat? It plays off of the Whrrl "influence points" model.

Did someone say Whrrl? :-)

I love this conversation, Mike - thanks for starting it. I would argue that social media has advanced to the point that transactional "loyalty" programs are an anachronism. Making them more efficient with LBS is fine, but it's just a small incremental step. The social fabric we have now creates the means to motivate and reward something much closer to true loyalty.

You mentioned Whrrl's influence points model -- we've created Societies in which brands and merchants can participate, and people level up based on their word-of-mouth influence in the Society. And the higher level you are, the better the rewards. The key is that the primary way to get points is for other people to respond favorably to your recommendations, so if you're spewing irrelevance from the rooftops (nice image there), you don't make any progress.

It's all part of our deep conviction about ultra-relevant, personalized discovery for the real world. I think the world will look much more like (a positive version) of "Minority Report."

FYI, here's our blog post re: the launch of Society Rewards:
http://bit.ly/8ZLo31

I'd love to use whrrl except you have no apps for phones besides the iPhone.

Kevin, fair enough. The good news is that we're very close to launching our Android app and Blackberry's not far behind. We also have the mobile web experience at m.whrrl.com if none of those work for you.