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Mathew Ingram at GigaOM recently blogged about the confusion that results from marketing campaigns that assume too much about their audience’s level of tech literacy. The incident in question was a Gap promo “which offered users a free pair of jeans if they ‘checked in’ at a Gap store using the Facebook Places feature.” While the internal staff called the campaign a success, Ingram and others have noted that the comments on the Gap promotion’s Facebook page tell a slightly different story:
Sure enough, if you go to the page that The Gap set up on Facebook for the promotion,there are a whole pile of bewildered users — most of whom appear to have been going to the Facebook page and typing the words “check in.” Others said they had gone to a Gap store and didn’t have “the coupon” they needed for jeans. Most clearly didn’t understand that checking in required the Facebook Places feature, and that the offer also required users to do this at a specific Gap store location, using an iPhone or an Android device.
The moral of this story? “Until location-sharing becomes more mainstream, ‘checking in’ is still going to seem like a foreign concept to many, unless you are talking about getting a room at a hotel.” Coming on the heels of a publicity push by Facebook to promote the ways in which businesses might take advantage of its new Places functionality, one is left with the feeling that the technological cart has been put in front of the horse. Time to revisit our predictions for 2010?
More on the web:
Mathew Ingram, “Gap Promo Shows Location Deals Need Work,” GigaOM (11/06/2010).
Jenna Wortham, “Facebook Offers Local Deals for Mobile Users,” The New York Times (11/03/2010).
Erick Tseng, “Making Mobile More Social,” The Facebook Blog (11/03/2010).
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