JayWeintraub

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JayWeintraub.com - Internet Advertising Analysis and Commentary Less frequent than I'd prefer musings from Jay Weintraub , Founder of LeadsCon . Groupon vs. Foursquare - Gap's Social Marketing Experiment In the Gap family, the Old Navy brand often takes the advertising prize for its inventive commercials hyping up its bargain-priced fare. When it comes to experimental media, the Gap has the more experimental and forward testing marketing team. Until August 22, 2010 Gap has underway a test with Foursquare. Check-in to any Gap, and you will receive a 25% discount on your purchases. Let's say you didn't know about the sale, and were doing a search for Gap. Here is what you'd see. Click on a location, and you will see the details of the special offer. I am huge fan of the fourquare business. Perhaps, better said, I am huge fan of the business that fourquare will become. Much of that has to do with having seen one the company's co-founders speak at a conference. (Thanks again @dens). Not being an avid enough user of the application, I only found out about the deal through a friend. Many probably found out about it through other online sources such as Mashable who covered the launch of the promotion or perhaps by checking-in near by and noticing that another venue, in this case the Gap, had a special offer. Members of Groupon would have learned about the Gap deal had they checked their inbox. Groupon popularized the local daily deal and has revolutionized local lead gen. The initial business model revolved around the group coupon with deals "tipping", i.e., becoming active once a certain number of people participated. It's the opposite of scarcity tapping into social proof instead. Deals still tip, but the anticipation of them tipping has waned given instead of being if, it's now how fast. Here is the Groupon Gap Email (which is very close in appearance to the landing / home page). So how well did each do? With foursquare, we don't, but the answer is most likely, average. If we were to assume that the venue page showed check-ins for just today, then the numbers could be interesting, as my back of the envelope tally puts us at just about a thousand. That, though, is presumably not how the stats work, especially since most stores have just opened. No fault to foursquare. That is not how the system is designed. The Gap is not a social experience. It's check-ins will be low. The coffee shop down the street has 15x the number of check-ins that the Gap near it does. Groupon on the other hand is not a platform based on social discovery. It's a commerce platform. You don't need friends to enjoy the experience. For me, the fun part of the buying process is the guilty pleasure from seeing how many others purchased. So I clicked on the email and got this: The site continues to tease us with being occasionally online. During one such viewing, I looked for the running tally. For the first time since I can recall, the site won't say. It merely says, "tipped when thousands purchased." It could be a Gap requirement, or it could be giving away too much information about the company to competitors.

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