To bid adieu to February, we here at the Creative Department said “go big or go home!” For final Friday, we spritzed it, frizzed it, bumped it, curled it, sprayed it*, wigged it, you name it.
*No matches were lit in the making of this holiday.
Here are some of the hairspray-tastic highlights:
Laura was made for this sport.
Jacqui had dimension.
John celebrated Big “Hare” Friday. (Oh, copywriter, you and your puns.)
Adam rocked a hybrid Bob Dylan – Jonas Brother inspired coif.
Check out the full gallery of updos, fros and curls by clicking the thumbs below.
People outside of Cincinnati (recent Vanity Fair article and response) might see us as behind the times or maybe we are too humble for our own good. Either way there are a lot of great, innovative people and companies in our region.
You might have recently heard about Secret Cincinnati – which started as a Facebook Group a few weeks ago that gained close to 20,000 members in 72 hours.
This weekend a team of 20 selected from over 100 applicants will converge here at The Creative Department and launch a new company that will bring Secret Cincinnati to life as a sustainable model for localized user generated content.
The sprint starts today at 6pm, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, Monday should bring a functional beta version of the site. Cincinnati is full of secrets. Shhhh.
Stay tuned for details.
Location-aware social networks allow you to tell your friends where you are so you can meet up, have a drink, and hang out simply by “checking in” on your smart phone. One of the more popular networks, Foursquare, incorporates competitive elements to keep users interested.
Created by one of the co-founders of Dodgeball (purchased and killed by Google), Foursquare’s popularity has recently pushed it out of the phone and onto a 126-foot LED video screen at the entrance to Las Vegas’ Miracle Mile Shops.
How Does It Work?
After you’ve installed the Foursquare app to your smart phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre) and created an account, you can check-in wherever you are, shout out to your friends, make lists of things to do, and earn points for trying new places and frequenting your favorite haunts.
Foursquare draws from a list of known businesses in cities all over the world. However, if you are in a city like mine, Cincinnati, which is not on the “official” Foursquare list, a lot of the information is from other Foursquarers. You can also go through a fairly simply process to add a location.
Once you check-in a number of times you start to earn badges for special achievements (like being on a boat or working out at the gym). If you are a regular, you can become the Mayor of that location.
Earning points works like this:
- +5 points for a first time check-in
- +5 points for adding a new venue
- +1 point for per check-in, increasing by +1 with each subsequent check-in during the day (e.g. you’ll receive +4 points for the 4th venue you check into)
Currently the points don’t translate into any real-world currency, they are mostly for bragging rights among your friends.
And some Foursquarers, particularly in Japan, have a lot of bragging to do. How do they have any time to actually have friends?
How Do They Monetize It?
After you check in, Foursquare can then push you deals from the other establishments around you. For example, a few weeks ago I was in Grand Rapids, MI. I checked in at the local beer mecca, Hopcat, and the tapas place down the street pinged me with an offer of free tapas for checking in.
Or let’s say you’re the Mayor of a local coffee shop, you might earn Mayoral Specials for checking in.
Mr. Gyros on Greenwood Ave in Seattle offers free high fives to Foursquarers who check-in.
By selling businesses the option of offering tangible, real-life rewards (like free tapas or high fives), Foursquare can be fun AND useful.
What Else?
Like many of the location-based mobile apps, Foursquare allows you to sync up your account with Twitter and Facebook. This allows your non-Foursquare friends to find you rather easily so they can (hopefully) buy you a beer, but it also has two unintended consequences:
- Pissing off your friends on Facebook and Twitter who don’t live anywhere near you with a stream of useless updates like, “Craig just checked-in @ Your Mom’s House.”
- Infringing on your privacy (with your permission, of course). The site Please Rob Me streams Foursquare users’ twitter feeds to show who’s not home right now and therefore has an emprty house.
And finally, GPS-be-damned, there is a major flaw in Foursquare’s current model which is the system can be gamed fairly easily. Now to be fair, Foursquare does try to limit rapidfire check-ins, but long-range check-ins are another story.
My brother in Seattle regularly checks into my other brother’s house in St. Louis to try and oust him from the Mayorship.
Jim Bumgardner recently had a lengthy post (“Mayor of the North Pole“) detailing how he cheats on Foursquare:
I created five “Java Monkeys” which grabbed about 120 different Starbucks in different regions (east, west, midwest, south, intl). I identified and targeted hotly contested Starbucks by searching Twitter for recent oustings. My script automatically visited those ones, to the consternation of the new mayors.
I created a fake Martha Stewart who checks into dollar stores and pawnshops when not visiting Martha Stewart Omnimedia and the set of her TV Show.
I created a fake Simon Cowell who visits massage parlors and gets lunch at Hotdog on a Stick when not visiting the Kodak theater.
I created a fake Tommy Chong who is mayor of 130 cannabis clinics.
I created a fake Sammy Davis Jr who checks into casinos and bars in Las Vegas.
I created a “random nerd” who checked into a number of large campuses in the Silicon Valley.
So why is cheating bad? To begin with, you can add locations that don’t exist or locations that no one cares about but you (like your backyard). AND, with the ability for users to check-in practically anywhere they like without actually being there, whatever advertising power businesses have on Foursquare is significantly diminished. If the advertising model is based on impressions, they certainly aren’t as targeted as they are made out to be.
The Bottom Line
Foursquare does a great job of making it fun and easy to connect with your friends. Little touches like badges for special events (I earned an Ignite badge for attending IgniteCincinnati this week) indicate that the folks behind Foursquare care about keeping users engaged. That said, it is a location-based app and the accuracy of its location-awareness could and should be improved.
Creative Department’s Rating
(4 out of 5)
Over the past weekend, The Creative Department joined our agencies-in-arms for the 2010 Cincinnati Addy Awards to toast camaraderie and great advertising. We were pleased to take home three silver Addys for our work with Macy’s, P&G PackDev, and the Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education. Our friends at Northlich and AdClub Cincinnati hosted a fun show, even kicking it off with the Cincinnati Bucket Boys (if you aren’t familiar, they can be seen entertaining crowds outside practically every Cincinnati sporting event).
After the show, the Creative Department crew headed out for some celebratory libations at Knockback Nat’s. Coincidentally, Señor Roy’s Taco Patrol, purveyors of fresh Mexican fare and one of our clients, was parked right down the street and made for a tasty late night snack for the CD crew.
See what people were saying about the #cincyaddys night or check out The Creative Department in action by clicking the thumbs below.
Congrats to all the Addy award winners!
Every couple of months The Creative Department heads over to the downtown Hoxworth Blood Bank to make a deposit. Here are some shots from our February 2010 visit (click to enlarge), including one where Mike realized that he left with someone else’s coat when we went to get coffee at Tazza Mia.
Donating blood saves lives. Find a blood donation center in Cincinnati or near you.
