Foursquare Frenzy

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of hot location-based social service Foursquare, addressed a roomful of marketers in June. He asked for a show of hands of how many had tried to work with the company but didn't hear back. A lot of hands went up. The simple message: the still-small company is struggling to further develop its service while responding to the avalanche of requests.Now, with $20 million in new funding, agencies are hopeful the digital world's new belle of the ball will build tools to help them use the service in deeper ways.Adweek spoke with several agencies that report frustrating experiences with Foursquare. Some have found it both hard to contact and unwilling to come up with marketing ideas. One agency representing a major package-goods client said the company put the onus on the brand and agency to find the best way to use the service."They're not responsive and extremely hard to work with," said a digital agency exec who asked not to be named. "It's hard to bring campaigns to life. Nobody knows how to create a badge or ask [Foursquare how] to enable behavior. It's black magic." In general, he said, "it's pretty much unworkable." One sticking point is Foursquare's strategy of initially limiting advertiser participation. Pepsi, for instance, has an exclusive lock on the soft drinks category. Additionally, Foursquare has identified one "charter advertiser" for some major categories, which it then works with to better understand what works before taking on other advertisers. While less formal than exclusive contracts, it nonetheless leaves some competitors out in the cold, if only temporarily."There have been a number of things we've been told we can't do because it's already being done in some markets," said Adrian Ho, a partner with Zeus Jones. Working with Foursquare, he noted, is in some ways similar to working with Facebook in its early days. Foursquare doesn't "have the infrastructure that makes clients comfortable," Ho added. "It's a bit like the Wild West. It's hard to get meetings in person. It's hard to get time on the phone." There is the danger the hiccups will sour relationships. Mark Drapeau, Microsoft's director of innovative social engagement, left a scorching comment on a blog post about Foursquare. He said he tried everything from e-mailing to calling to stopping by Foursquare's office in the hopes of doing a partnership for a Microsoft event that would include a custom badge. He said he eventually gave up. "They're creating a new marketing opportunity," said Andrea Harrison, social media lead at Razorfish, which has yet to work with Foursquare on a program. "They don't have the packaged media kit ready to go."Many startups, of course, experience growing pains. The company's smaller competitors, for instance, are also still figuring out how to work with businesses. Gowalla, for one, does not yet have self-service tools for businesses. Josh Williams, CEO of Gowalla, said it's working to develop them."There's a lot of hype in the space," he said. "There's promise of great things that will happen, but right now it's really fledgling."Foursquare, despite the avalanche of attention it receives, has only 27 employees. Its top business executive, Tristan Walker, was a full-time student who only recently graduated and received his MBA. Even now, Foursquare has just five people working on business development.Walker said most of their work is in educating brands and agencies on the best ways to use the platform. Step one: set up an account and figure out how to add value to the experience. Too often, brands and agencies want to immediately offer badges, Walker told Adweek. "The brand's responsibility is to guide the experience of [its] consumers," he said. Foursquare, which has registered approximately 15,000 businesses, admits it has not been able to keep up with requests. It gets "thousands" of inquiries from brands per week, according to Foursquare, ranging from businesses wanting to verify their listings to those that want marketing programs. Foursquare has begun building tools to automate some processes, such as setting up a brand page. It's not all grumbles from brands and agencies. Those who have executed programs with Foursquare are generally pleased, while acknowledging the inherent challenges of working with a small company still figuring out its advertising product. "We did not have a difficult experience with Foursquare," said Ellen Stone, svp of marketing for Bravo. The network linked up to run a Foursquare marketing program that sprinkles tips related to its programming and awards badges for users visiting locations related to Bravo shows. "We knew that we were inaugurating a very new thing into the marketplace," she said, "and we wanted to make it a really good experience for the user. We've had a really great partnership." Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, believes agencies often make the mistake of thinking of Foursquare as a publisher rather than a technology platform. The most interesting programs can be done by using its API, he said, citing a Deep Focus program for Microsoft's Bing that used Foursquare to pull in data on bars in which to watch the World Cup. "Old-school digital agencies are used to being able to pick up the phone and call somebody, especially people that handle big packaged-goods money," said Schafer. "That's not necessarily the way of the world of the future. The fact is there's a DIY mentality that is foreign to a lot of media buyers."

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Foursquare Frenzy

Brian Morrissey

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Brian Morrissey