September 28, 2011
Placecast Nabs Win at First Ever AdAge Brand Hack in San Francisco
Last week AdAge hosted its first-ever “brand hack”, and San Francisco-based startup Placecast tied for the win in the mobile competition. With six startups vying for a prize from the Ignited agency, Placecast tied for top honors with Dwolla. Other competitors were Sonar, Goldrun, Banjo and Stampt. The win for Placecast cements the company’s position as a leader in location-based mobile marketing.
The brand hack was part of Ad Age Digital West, a one-day event in San Francisco. The point of the hack was to introduce startups to brand marketers and CMOs. According to AdAge, the winner of the mobile hack “will have the opportunity to work with digital agency Ignited to bring its technology to brands.”
Each startup had five minutes to make a presentation in front of Ellen Pao, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Kunur Patel, AdAge mobile reporter; Michael Morris, Senior Manager of Global Business & Market Development at American Express; and Eric Johnson, President & Founder of Ignited, a Los Angeles based marketing innovations agency. Each presentation was followed with five minutes of Q&A with the panel of judges. The winner of the mobile hack receives a deal with Ignited, whose clients include the U.S. Army, Sony, NBC Universal, Princess Cruises, and Jose Cuervo.
Blair Swedeen, Senior VP at Placecast, centered his presentation on Placecast’s ShopAlerts platform, a leading location-based mobile marketing platform that is currently licensed to AT&T in the United States and O2 in the UK. Over fifty brands are currently running ShopAlerts programs, including Starbucks, L’Oreal, Kmart, HP, JetBlue, White House Black Market, and The North Face.
ShopAlerts is a B2B solution that brands and carriers offer for both acquisition and retention. Consumers must go through a double opt-in in order to be part of any ShopAlerts program. Placecast creates geofences around selected physical locations – stores, parks, event venues, etc. – and when a consumer enters a geofenced area, a ShopAlerts message is sent via SMS (text message) or MMS (picture message) to his or her mobile phone. ShopAlerts may also be integrated into any mobile app, with push alerts sent to consumers based on their location.
Ignited describes what marketing innovation means to them: “That’s the thing about innovation. It’s unknown. Unprecedented. And it tends to make people a little uncomfortable. But there’s no such thing as playing it safe anymore. You could even argue that safe is the new risky. These days, you have to be agile. Responsive. Willing to experiment, evaluate, optimize and reinvent.”
Placecast certainly has experience in innovation; the ShopAlerts platform has swept awards since its launch 2.5 years ago – the National Retail Federation RACie Award for Innovation, Webby Award honors, CTIA eTech honoree, and others.
“We were thrilled that AdAge selected us to be part of the competition, and then being chosen by Ignited as one of the winners truly validated our work around location-based services. We can’t wait to start working with Eric on some cutting-edge campaigns,” says Swedeen.
