Chromaroma is a type of location-based top-trumps. You collect places, identities, modes of transport and passengers as you travel around the city; discover and investigate mysteries attached to different locations and build alliances with fellow passengers that share your journeys. It’s a game you can play on your own, or part of a team.’

Chromaroma is pretty exciting. It clearly echoes platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla but the TFL data adds another level to it. If they can pull off making it genuinely interesting to use by actually telling you something you didn’t know or offering you a worthwhile reward or pay-off beyond the initial ‘this is cool so I’ll have a go’ stage then I think it could be a big success.

I am intrigued to see whether the appeal of gaming itself is enough to build a base of players for the long run or whether those putting in effort to sign up and regularly engage in the game will want to see some tangible form of reward. I suspect this might split the players between the casual and the hardcore enthusiasts, asking a wider question of whether for these type of location based platforms the fun of playing is sufficient reward. Inevitably this will probably depend on how enjoyable the game is and upon their being several levels of complexity and involvement.

Here‘s a presentation with many more details by Katy Lindemann, and she talks here about trying to involve more partners which will hopefully develop upon the reward side for the user.

[Annoyingly Slideshare embedding is still up the creek hence the millions of links]

Obviously it’s still early days but that is what is exciting about it, this project could go in any number of directions and I’m really looking forward to playing with it to see how it works out.

There is another presentation by the brain behind it here.

Yet another ‘youth craze’ that schools are getting worked up about. Read about it here.

Interestingly though some schools are using them as rewards. Along the lines of Droga5′s ‘Million Project‘ where kids are given a phone and get minutes and texts for showing up and working well, schools have been offering them as credit for good work or behaviour.

CNN Money Interview with the founder.

More data and details on the compete.com blog.

While every brand in the world seems to be ‘Facebook-ing’ their brand using fan pages which people passively ‘like’, forget they have done so, and never think any more of it. There have been some good examples of brands becoming more involved such as the Dr Pepper status takeover. The challenge and reward nature of this activity creates far higher involvement and by being in a space which brands have never been before is far more likely to be noticed than a boring corporate fanpage, as well as having a bit of humour to it and being consistent with the personality of the brand. Yes it went wrong in the end but it was still a good idea.

When the Dr Pepper work came out it reminded me of something I had scribbled down during a module at University but which had never made it through to the final presentation. When I say scribbled I mean it, it said ‘tag brands in facebook photos, build community of fans, catalogue of real life users’.

So the premise is that a brand could utilise the prolific uploading of photos to Facebook within our generation to enable users to tag their brand within pictures, in the same way Dr Pepper rewarded users this brand could offer deals or free goods to the person who tops the tag ‘leader-board’ for being photographed with their brand the most times.

Ikea engaged thousands of customers of one particular store by mirroring my suggestion, people tagged themselves in photos they uploaded for the chance to win free stuff from within the store, details in this video.

Considering which brands would be best suited I discarded value brands because it must be both recognisable and something which the users are proud to be seen in. I also discarded most premium brands because of the need for users to have multiple garments and for many users to be able to take part in the ‘competition’ for it to spread quickly.

Consequently I think this would work best for a brand such as Superdry because their fans are very likely to engage in this type of competition and (judging by the size of the logos on most garments) are also very likely to be proud to be tagged wearing them. Equally Nike, Adidas or Puma could try such a campaign but the logistics of managing something of that scale would be mammoth.

It is a particularly good fit because there is already a large community on Facebook…

…and people already upload photos of themselves wearing their new Superdry clothes there.

This sort of tool would not only grow the online community but also make those who are simply passive ‘fans’ much more likely to engage with the brand online. It would also give the firm and their designers a greater idea of how the garments are actually being worn and by who.

Reservation – Not being nearly techie enough I’m not sure whether this could be done quite in the way I have described it. The idea would lose much of its value if the tag wasn’t visible within the users normal tagged photos and had to be within a standalone app. Furthermore with the invention of Google Goggles and similar apps your phone may one day automatically know the brands in the photos you take but that fun/irritation is for another day.

I would love to hear your opinions, positive or negative or even suggestions for how it could be done differently, better or why it shouldn’t be done at all.

Thanks for reading.

Freshers Week Marketing Soc Campaign

House trip to St.Andrews to see Birmingham City vs Man City

Plenty of time spent in our dodgy, lovable local(s)

Often followed by early mornings on Library Road to prepare presentations for 9am Seminars

Battling through the snow to get to/from campus

Plenty of Barbecues

Pride and hope, rapidly becoming despair

All ending in relief, celebration and sad goodbyes

Cranking up the blogatron once more. Exams are finished, graduation next week and a whole life ahead.

However, with my finals just five weeks away I’ll be off again. Enjoy the election, and if you do one thing for me while I’m away don’t vote Labour (the government of the illegal war, tuition fees, fiscal recklessness, CCTV state etc).

This seal has over half a million fans on Facebook, despite the annoying use of ‘lol’d’ in the title. Check it here.