Location based marketing

Girls Around Me – A twisted lesson in App branding

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Check-in service FourSquare has been around for a while Banjo, Glancee, Gowalla etc. have been around for under a year, but it was not until an iOS app called ‘Girls around me’ created a furor earlier this month that these services have begun to consciously bear the ‘creep’ tag. As described on the website, “Girls around me’ scans your surroundings and helps you find out where girls or guys are hanging out. You can also see the ratio of girls to guys in different places”. An article in Cult of Mac which described it as having “potential to be used as a tool for rapists and stalkers” gained disproportionate attention and eventually FourSquare revoked its API access and the company i-Free Innovations pulled it off the app store with a week.

Stepping back if we compare ‘Girls around me’ with Banjo and Glancee, you’ll realize that they don’t differ much in core functionality.

Banjo aggregates updates and check-ins from the services you, your friends, and people around you already use — like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter (via geotagged Tweets), Gowalla, Instagram, and more. You choose to authenticate yourself with either Facebook or Twitter and in a flash, you have access to a stream of tweets, updates, and check-ins from people in close proximity.

Glancee does not showcase as much as Banjo, but it can identify people around you who share common interests with you; the data being pulled from your Facebook profile.

In my opinion, the attention around the app was more to do with its branding and its Agent Provocateuresque design language than it was to do with its function. And while one could use the app to even scan for guys, the company chose to focus on just one clear market winning aspect of the product. Evidently, the company did itself no favor with this approach, but one can’t fault them for not being focused on clear messaging.  Considering the galaxy of apps out there and the rage and excitement among renegade start-ups over social platforms, powerful branding, messaging, and targeting deserves attention, has clear merit, and should not be overlooked.

One of the key questions in branding is: Who are we talking to and what is the one clear message that we want them to takeaway? So, let’s just assume for a moment that the app was called ‘People around me’ – Would the offering seem as powerful and exciting?

Deal or no deal?

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Find deals on restaurants around you

When in doubt about what to eat, a sandwich pretty much does the job. It’s quick, satisfying and filling. So while soaking in a bright sunny Sunday, I stepped into ‘Which wich’ on ‘The Ave’ to grab a sandwich. Having made my selection and approaching the payment desk I noticed mini-poster which had a rather large Microsoft tag on it promoting a special offer. It was a partnership with Pirq- a deal and discount mobile application

I whipped out my phone to scan the tag expecting to retrieve a simple mobile discount coupon which I could victoriously waive in front of the cashier. Instead, the tag opened the Pirq web page and from here on began the tap dance. Inching and pinching my way on the screen I tapped the ‘Install for Android’ button. At this point I realised that I was holding up a queue behind me and without intention had also set in motion a small chain of tag scanners. As expected, a couple of them didn’t have Microsoft tag scanner installed on their phones.

Coming back to the tap dance, the installation through the webpage failed for some weird reason and so I attempted downloading it from the Android app store. Post download I had to sign in either using Facebook or with my email id and zip code. I chose the latter hoping that I could finally stake claim to some gastronomically delightful deals. But whoever said success doesn’t come easy was right; at this stage a message popped up informing me that a confirmation link has been sent to my email id….I’m tearing my hair right now….pfff. The latent sense of achievement was now beginning to border on embarrassment and so I paid full price for the sandwich and left the place.

Determined to see this through, on reaching home I completed the email confirmation step and voila!!! …..another hoop…… I now had to choose a password to use the service.

This is a classic case of a sign in system that’s frustrating and broken. A complex process that forced me to self-forfeit a deal and a user experience that only ensured that a sandwich didn’t taste as good as it could have.

Since Pirq had a promotion running at the outlet I would’ve made one simple change to ensure that drop offs from new customers don’t occur due to the experience above. If a user didn’t already have the the Pirq app installed on his phone, on scanning the tag a mobile coupon to redeem the offer instantaneously should have been sent along with a simple app download button and a message stating “Download the Pirq app to avail of more deals like this”. Having tasted success, the user would be positively predisposed to go through the sign in mechanism. Even here, all data input ought to be captured on one form avoiding the tap dance described above.

The app itself is pretty cool. It listed offers from nearly 15 restaurants within a couple of miles from my location with a live counter of how many deals were yet up for grabs at each place. I’ll definitely make use it, but the sign in process could have been far better.