The BrandForward Blog

I’m not the kind of girl who sits at the front of the class. Okay maybe when I was a kid. (Better access for when you want to challenge the teacher.) But nowadays my style is a bit more subtle. I usually like to slink into the middle of a session. Or maybe the back on a bad hair day. But last Wednesday at Ad:Tech NY, I made sure to find a seat early so I could get right up close. Dennis Crowley was going to be speaking after all. And I wasn’t about to miss him.

But I sorta made a mistake. In my eagerness to not look like a drooling Bieber fan I didn’t swoop on him before his session started. Instead I decided to delay gratification.

Meanwhile tweeting my awe of his futuristic fabulousness, braggardly twitpic’ing blurry stage shots of him, anxiously awaiting the moment I could meet the man… the legend… the creator of freakin’ Foursquare!

And then it was over. Thirty minutes into this “one-hour” Ad:Tech session, some handlers whisked him away, telling us “Oh! This is a split session where the next thirty minutes will be a panel!”

Crafty buggers. What now?

Do I skulk past the huge crowd from my cherry perch on the mostly empty third row center to chase him down? Or do I take my chances by stalking him in the speaker’s lounge later?

Owing to my feigned affection for subtlety, I decided to sit through the panel discussion and try to catch Dennis later. And of course his office is in the city so I could always pull an “I was just in the neighborhood!” on another day. Ever the optimist.

But something interesting happened.

The geo-local mobile marketing panel that followed was the most intense, exciting, riveting thirty minutes of my entire Ad:Tech experience.

It had comedy. It had suspense. It had a protagonist. It had everything.

There were five panelists and a moderator. As the first four panelists started talking, everything they said was typical and expected within the geo-local space. Brands need to blah..blah… focus on turning check-ins into ROI. Brands need to… ahem… create coupons. Brands need to… brace yourself… build their own apps. And then something actually interesting happened.

Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR opened his mouth.

You have to envision this. A panel of seasoned, buttoned-up suit types throwing around the greatest hits of 2010 marketing lingo. And then 21 year-old Seth. It almost felt like two panels in one. I watched as the four other panelists had their own conversation about cash registers ringing and measurable ROI.

And then I watched Seth talk about experiences, baking in the brand, and killing the coupon.

The panelists were clearly not understanding what Seth was saying, not grabbing onto his words of wisdom, or even acknowledging them. They’d give him his obligatory 30-seconds and jump right back into cash registers and coupons.

Even the moderator was minimizing Seth’s comments, subtly ribbing him about his product.

But I saw rays of light emanating as Seth spoke.

He said he’s on a mission to “kill the coupon.” He said he’s converting game mechanics into real life. He said he wants to bake in the offer and create a brand experience. Seth envisions a world where brands can connect with consumers at a deep level by engaging them, exciting them, and creating a reason for them to love the brand and keep coming back.

Not a new concept in the branding world, so why is it so easy for seasoned marketers to let themselves get blinded by the slew of shiny digital toys and forget the basic principles for connecting the brand with the consumer? It’s nearly unfathomable the word “coupon” is being bandied about in public by people who five years ago wouldn’t be caught dead recommending one.

Coupons are a blip on the radar compared to the future of geo-local mobile strategies. I can understand small businesses wanting the short-term tactical effectiveness of a coupon, and I can even accept that this is a new thing and geo-local coupons are a temporary hot ticket for big brands.

But where is the forward thinking? Where is the creative vision? Where is the risk for reward? Jumping onto the geo-local coupon bandwagon isn’t a risk. Baking a brand experience into the product/offering/promotion is. Creating a coupon instead of doing the creative homework to develop a baked-in experience is… frankly… lazy marketing.

Considering I have clients that will insist on coupons (and I’ll probably end up recommending a few here and there), I’m sure I’ll be asked if coupons are really that awful. When used for a specific short-term strategic goal, no. When used in the place of what should be brilliant, experiential, fresh-baked brand creative, yes.

Back at the geo-local session, I was giddy when I saw a sly smile cross Seth’s face as it became clear the others weren’t getting it… were too wrapped up in last year’s thinking to peek into the future with him.

It seemed like Seth’s fellow panelists and moderator would rather laugh him off the stage (game mechanics? in marketing? for real?!) than address his simple, yet brilliant vision of the future of geo-local mobile.

I have a feeling someone’s going to be doing a lot of laughing. And Seth has a pretty good idea of who it’ll be.

Can “game mechanics” really have a positive impact on marketing?

How long until geo-local check-in apps like Foursquare, SCVNGR, and Gowalla go mainstream?

How do you “bake in” a brand experience that attracts customers without coupons?