#SMWF Case study: NASA’s use of Foursquare
Back in 2010 NASA rolled out a new branded partnership with Foursquare, straight off the heels of announcing the space agency was teaming up with another geo-location based social platform, Gowalla. The partnership features a customised section on the Foursquare website, where NASA provides official information about the space program in locations throughout the US and encourages users to “explore the universe”.
To launch the Foursquare campaign, NASA left tips at visitor centres across the US to encourage visits and create awareness about the facilities. By following NASA on Foursquare and checking in at the visitor centre locations, science museums and planetariums users could unlock the new NASA ‘Explorer’ badge and receive a free scoop of Astronaut Ice-Cream.
It wasn’t just those on planet Earth using the location platform, in October 2010 Col Doug ‘Wheels’ Wheelock became the first person to make an extra-terrestrial ‘check-in’. In a stunt designed to mark the launch of the partnership Cmdr Wheelock checked in at the International Space Station as well as tweeting photos and mission updates from his @Astro_Wheels account.
Dennis Crowley, Chief Executive and Co-founder of Foursquare was reported to say ‘Check-ins from around the world has been cool, but this blew my mind. We’re psyched to partner with NASA to help users explore the space program and the universe’.
With the last space shuttle launch taking place in July interest in NASA was at an all time high. By using social and location based tools they were able to show the public they are involved in much more than sending people into space and the continued success has enable them to position themselves in a way to help maintain public interest and offer tremendous potential for the future.
Stephanie L. Scheirholz leads NASA’s social media activities and will be speaking at this year’s #SMWF N. America taking place this November at the Javits Center, New York. Stephanie will be speaking on day 2 at 1010 covering location-based marketing in-depth cover areas such as:
– Analyse of consumer behaviour – who are the consumers of location based marketing
– Predicting behaviour through geo-tagging and marketing from it
To secure your place at this year’s event and save 25% on conference passes click here. Be quick- discount expires Oct 1st, 2011!
