Today I became the Mayor of Hill & Knowlton. This honour unfortunately comes with no real benefits but at least it is a small claim to fame I can lord over my colleagues from time to time.

I have been using Foursquare for over a week now and one thing I will say for it is that it’s addictive. But right now, that’s all it is. Earning points and collected badges gives a sense of achievement but nothing of genuine value. That’s where Foursquare is different to Twitter – whilst Twitter is about communication, Foursquare is about reward and right now the reward is limited.

However, hopefully this is all set to change. Domino’s and Debenhams have recently announced they have agreed partnership deals with Foursquare to offer incentives to their most loyal (or most frequent) customers – and this is where Foursquare will come into its own. For bricks & mortar brands, Foursquare provides and engaging platform to attract and reward their customers, the greater the reward the more incentive there is for consumers to use Foursquare and visit their local pizzeria or fashion retailer.

Here are 5 ways brands can utilise Foursquare:

1. Mayor Incentives: On Foursquare if you visit a venue more than anyone else you can be crowned the Mayor of that venue. This achievement could come with perks such as discounts, freebies and premium access to new products, initiatives or offers e.g. The Mayor of Hill & Knowlton should receive half price beer in the bar.
2. Brand Badges: As you use Foursquare you collect badges – I earned the Bender badge (I know, I know) today for checking-in four nights in a row. Why not have a Fast Foodie badge sponsored by McDonalds, or a Fitness Freak badge sponsored by Virgin Gyms?
3. Offer Alerts: Using Foursquare, brands could easily identify people in the area that might be interested in special offers and new launches e.g. a bar in Clapham could message everyone that tends to go out in the area with a Happy Hour notice.
4. Collect User Feedback: When you check into a venue you are invited to leave a tip which is shared with other users who check into the same place e.g. Claire at Fitness First is the best personal trainer in Putney; or try the Pad Thai at Banana Leaf. Brands could collect this feedback to make tweaks to their service. Any complaints about a dish? Take it off the menu.
5. Target Do’ers: You can create To Do lists on Foursquare that list places you want to visit. If the London Eye could see that someone had them on their To Do list, why not get in touch and offer them a 2-for-1 deal? At the minute this would be fairly limited as the number of people on the site doesn’t make it off genuine value but I expect to see this become more relevant over the next 6 months

I’m sure there are marketers across the globe plotting how best to exploit the rise in popularity of Foursquare, which is great, but only if it plays to the core of what the platform offers, which is reward. Reward your customers and they will flock.

Five things you should check out before the week’s out:

1. Buzz and Snoop are teaming up for a rap duet. Sometimes the most unlikely partnerships can generate column inches
2. Kid reacts to his mum cancelling his World of Warcraft account. Never underestimate brand loyalty or consumer passion
3. Let it Ring! One of the most powerful and creative examples of communicating a road safety message I have ever seen. Previewed at Cannes Lions
4. Ever struggled to explain what Twitter is? The site’s co-founder Biz Stone provides an overview for @rbolivar’s Mum at Cannes Lions
5. Michael Jackson performing Man in the Mirror. A song by one of the greatest musicians of our time, in his prime

Have a great weekend.

Anyone that follows me on Twitter will know that I have just returned from the Cannes Lions Festival where Hill & Knowlton was playing host to its own seminar (the first time PR has been included in 56 years).

We decided to show off a bit so recruited Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to speak and held the festival’s first ever live tweet-up.

You can check out videos from the seminar here.

I was lucky enough to hang out with Biz who turned out to be a class act and uncovered a few interesting facts about the man that you might not know:

• He’s a strict vegan and even wears “vegetarian” shoes
• He loves portmanteaus and can come up with them in seconds
• He likes tequila…but in a connoisseur kind of way not in a “slammer” kind of way

Check out the videos above as they offer some real insight into how Twitter came about, Biz’s thoughts on why it has become such a phenomenon and what the future holds.

Enjoy!

I know I know – 6 months and not a peep. Things have been a little hectic but the time is right for me to return to the blogging fold. And, to mark danleach.co.uk rising from the ashes I have a new design courtesy of 5THIRTYONE.

With a new design comes a renewed focus. A focus not only on PR but marketing in general with the consistent theme of celebrating creativity within the industry.

Speak soon!

It’s been pretty quiet round these parts (again) but there is good reason. Between my day job (usually 2am – 3am) I have been working on a new Twitter application that effectively replicates the Google Alerts service but, yes you guessed it, for Twitter!

So, I proudly introduce Twilert.com to the world!

Ideal for anyone interested in following opinion or discussion on brands, products, people – anything really.

Give it a go, it’s dead easy to use and completely free. Let me know what you think.

Oh and follow us on Twitter too.

Another day another Internet meme doing the rounds.

MIchael Litman from LitmanLive and [EDIT 30/10/2008] Paul Stallard have tagged me in the Three for Three post where bloggers are encouraged to list their three choices across three categories before tagging other bloggers to continue the chain.

So, here goes…

Top three non-work websites:

• - Football365.com – The number one resource for the UK football fan. It isn’t the mecca for stats that the BBC is but its mix of irreverent comment, insight and humour makes it a winner in my book!
• - Digg.com – The ultimate time waster but an incredibly useful one. An instant snapshot of what’s hot on the web
• - TheOnion.com – Older than the WWW itself. One of the few US sites to do satire very well

Top three karaoke songs:

• - Don’t Stop Believing by Journey – “I love Journey, but I hate baseball cards”
• - We Built This City by Starship – Guarantee you’ll get groans when this first comes on but 2 minutes in you’ll have the entire bar singing it with you
• - Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi – For little over 3 minutes you honestly believe you are a rock star

Top three weekend cocktails:

• - Mojito from anywhere
• - Raspberry Collins from Lab on Old Compton Street
• - Old Fashioned from Match just off Regent Street

That’s given me a craving for a bit of Journey…”She’s just a small time girl….”

You are now tagged…

• - Gaylene Ravenscroft from Collective Conversation
• - Candace Kuss from Brand Street
• - Paul Stallard from Paul Stallard’s Technology Blog

I’m beginning to find some innovate ways brands are leveraging the Twitter platform. Two new services caught my eye this week!

The first, Qwitter, aims to help stop people smoking. As a non-smoker I haven’t tried it but it’s simple to get involved. Simply follow Qwitter and send messages to the user (@iquit) telling it how many cigarettes you have had. Qwitter will track how many packs you’re getting through and provide tips and advice to help you kick the habit.

The second is Tweet What You Spend which, like Qwitter, allows you to send messages and track how much you are spending day to day.

What I love about this is the fact that it’s such a simple way of engaging an audience through an existing and established platform. Both Qwitter and Tweet What You Spend are the start of brands engaging Twitter users with value-add services.

Many of our clients are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, using it as a simple comms tool. But, the examples above show that Twitter is becoming much more than a micro-blogging service and extending beyond comms and into a powerful web app for both brands and consumers.

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article discussing how traditional PR is dead and today’s Google Chrome announcement only furthers my belief that PRs must continue to looks at new and interesting ways of communicating to the media and consumers.

Google has pulled off, in my opinion, a mini masterstroke by announcing its new browser through a cartoon. Why? Well for a start it’s much more interesting than a press release. But, more importantly look at how the story is being reported, there are just as many blog posts and news articles discussing the cartoon as the product itself.

The cartoon does nothing more than communicate the key messages and features of Google Chrome but by packaging it in an interesting and unique way, (all of) those messages are reaching the end-user. By discussing or even posting scans of the cartoon the media are doing the equivalent of reprinting a press release.

I don’t think we can all go start sending out cartoons to journalists, we can’t lose sight that the Google brand and this particular announcement carries a fair amount of weight with the media. However, we shouldn’t be afraid of exploring new ways of engaging journalists and consumers, especially now that Google has given us the perfect case study.

Found a great new website over the weekend that could prove to be an incredibly useful tool for some raw measurement of campaigns, events and activity.

It’s called Twist and allows you to plot the frequency of keywords found on Twitter. It’s quick and dirty as far as measurement goes but clients love the odd chart and this is an effective way of demonstrating the amount of online buzz being generating at any one time.

As a side experiment I created a graph based on mentions of “Gordon Brown” and “David Cameron”. There is a lot of talk of David Cameron being the new-age digital political compared favourably to Mr. Analogue Gordon Brown. But on this evidence, GB is much more prominent amongst the Twitter chatter!

Today marks the 4th anniversary of BlogDay. To take part the rules are simple:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:
   http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2008 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

-

So without further ado, Happy BlogDay 2008:

1. Delightful Work: Coach Tom Volkar provides advice on achieving, as he puts it, “work life freedom”. Great blog that should be visited whenever those deadlines start mounting up!
2. PsyBlog: Psychology is little more to me than a fleeting interest however I find this blog incredibly useful for gaining small insights into the way our minds work. For marketers this RSS feed should be a staple
3. The Blog of Tim Ferriss: Any blog with the url fourhourworkweek.com is going to get my vote. Great advice on Tim on working smarter and not harder
4. Chris Brogan: The hardest working man online? Probably! Chris regularly rolls out insightful, in-depth advice and information regarding social media and networking
5. Getting Ink: Sally Whittle’s often funny insight into the world of journalism. PRs are often portrayed as the arch enemies of journalists, Sally often points out why