Knowing who your customers are is crucial for a successful content campaign. Knowing where they are is no less so.

Geo-targeting, detecting a customer’s location and using that knowledge to personalize content, can be a powerful tool. For instance, Google uses it in search results, and Hertz changes its car rental website depending upon the location of the visitor.

The Content Strategist spoke with representatives from Marketwire and Tracx, two companies geo-target in their campaigns for brands.

The Content Strategist: How does geo-targeting help out brands and marketers? 

Eric Berkowitz, senior manager of product innovation at Tracx:

There are a couple ways to look at it because geo-targeting applies on a case-by-case basis. The customer team wants to know which stores or franchises they are receiving the most questions, complaints or issues.

People will complain to the telephone company about reception in certain parts of the country. [Geo-targeting] helps companies understand where their brand is doing well and where they need to provide more customer care. We can help you understand where the leads are coming from for new businesses and [how to] acquire new customers. You can figure out where you want to target your marketing activities.

Sheldon Levine, community manager at Marketwire:

It helps companies to get in touch with the people that matter specifically to them. If I have a store in Delaware, it’s pretty much pointless if my ads are reaching people in Miami. [Geo-targeting means] reaching out and actually touching the people you’ll get the most traction with.

There are two sides to it. [The first is] Facebook, where my profile says I live in Toronto so companies inside the Toronto area can target me and show what’s relevant to me in my area. The second one is hyper-geo-targeting. This means that I checked in on Foursquare, and a store across the street is able to see that. They will say to come and check out their store as well. They know for a fact I’m outside their store, so why not target me while I’m there to go inside the store. If they can hit me right as I’m walking by the store, there’s a greater chance I will act on it.

What sites do you use geo-targeting on?

Berkowitz:  It works across a lot of the different networks. The most geo-located information comes from Twitter or Facebook. Any piece of social content can be geo-located. It depends on user preferences and what they make available in their social profile. They can write their location on a blog or forum, or check in using FourSquare. Picture sharing services [like Instagram] allow you to geo-tag.

How can you tailor content from the geo-targeting information? 

Levine: From the geographic demographic, you’re able to learn about your community and audience. You can start making content that’s a little more relevant to them. If you’re a chain store that’s all across the United States but you notice that a lot of your community is from New York, you can start doing content pieces that have a little bit more to do with New York. People reading your content will be able to identify it and create that connection between themselves and your brand.

Should people be skeptical of brands being able to do this? Or is it a good thing? 

Berkowitz: There are best practices employed to leverage this kind of data in a way that’s friendly and useful, and will ultimately benefit the brand and customer. As long as the brand is thinking about and respecting peoples’ privacy, and they’re engaging with people in smart and relevant ways, it should ultimately make the customer more satisfied.

It just makes sense that that’s the way a brand should look at things. If you are in a city and you get certain ads from a business isn’t in your city, you think it might be a scam. If you tweet about how you need a camera and Canon, Nikon, or Sony contacts you and helps you find a store, that’s a good thing. In the end if you use this information wisely, it’s going to give you a more satisfied customer base.

Levine: There’s a two-sided coin to this. One side is yes, it seems a little bit freaky that brands might have all this information about you. But the flipside is that they can tailor content and offers a lot better to people because they know this information about them.

Do you want all these companes to have all this information about you? [Maybe not], however, because they have it, they’ll be able to understand you as a consumer a little bit better.

Anything you’d like to add?

Berkowitz: [With geo-targeting], we want to empower brands with information so they can understand their customers and the information relevant to them. I think you can expect to see brands using analytics that allow customers to make better decisions for the future.

Image courtesy of Olivier Le Moal/shutterstock

NASA’s Spacey Social Campaign

Wondering where the Curiosity Rover did while it was out all night? Well, it checked into Foursquare with a pretty cool picture … from Mars.

See it on Tech Crunch. The rover will be checking in over the 23-months it continues to roam around Mars.

L’Oreal on XBox … Black Ops Need Some Blush?

XBox 360 is trying to get beyond the unwashed masses of sweaty-palmed twenty-somethings playing Call of Duty. XBox is targeting their girlfriends via BrightLine’s interactive feature, The Next Level.

Ad Week reports that of the 20 million Xbox users, 40% are female. That’s a lot of mascara.

“This blurs the lines between programming and advertising content, including style tips and fashion advice with L’Oréal products organically woven throughout,” Rob Aksman, co-founder and chief of experience design at BrightLine said.

Is This a New Twist on Content?

“We need to create content that fits into the mindset of the consumer, not incessantly force the consumer to listen to our message all the time,” global head of social media for Ford Motor Company Scott Monty said.

In Monty’s opinion, the Oreo twist campaign sent a new standard for marketers and Monty argues engaging content comes down to “human nature — a common bond that unites every one of us.”

If that broad a definition seems a little overwhelming to you, there’s ten examples of what that means.

What Story Is Your Brand Telling?

This week during Advertising Week a panel debated the validity of Christopher Booker’s thesis in Seven Basic Plots, that no matter the spin, there are really only seven different types of stories.

“The challenge becomes finding which one best suits your brand, and then telling it skillfully, believably and — if you’re going to invite consumers to join in the story — extremely carefully,” Ad Week said. 

The Bald Truth 

Baldies everywhere banded together around yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article that suggested bald men were, overall, taken more seriously in the business world.

But the flowing locks are fighting back via Overstock.com’s chief executive Patrick Byrne, who told the WSJ, “To me, the people who are buzzing and recommending buzzing their hair to look masculine and dominant sound like a bunch of guys with control issues. Call me biased, but anyone who would change their haircut to score better on their next annual review … that strikes me as profoundly insecure.”

The subject of women’s hair never came up other than to suggest women might want to look feminine.

Keep Calm and Carry On Harry

In a bold move, the creator of the “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” campaign, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, is using Prince Harry’s now infamous recent stay in the city as the basis for a new take on the long running campaign.

The group is taking a stand against the people who posted the naked picture of Prince Harry online.

Ad Week reports VisitLasVegas.com/knowthecode has a new online petition for tourists to vow not to reveal anyone’s wild nights in Sin City.

Jack Bauer: the Man, the Myth, the Baker

Jack Bauer is back, this time only for one minute and some change, and he’s baking cupcakes. Acer teamed up with Mother London to create an explosive and delicious ad for the Aspire 35 Ultrabook.

It’s a fun ad for sure, but does the brand get lost in the frost?

MTV Launches Fantasy Election League

If Rock the Vote can’t grab the hearts and minds of young voters maybe fantasy sports will. MTV just launched the “Power of 12″ online campaign in an effort to engage the “millennial generation.”

Users pick a league and draft politicians for their teams. They can get extra points by checking in with MTV”s partners.

“Accordingly, players can earn bonus points for their team by checking in to campaign events on FourSquare and GetGlue, committing to voting via a pledge to Rock the Vote, or by answering youth-themed quiz questions about politics. Politico.com and BuzzFeed are also adding Fantasy Election ’12 buttons to their content, and players who read or watch stories on those sites will get themselves extra points,” Mashable reports.

Make Your Tweets a Little Sexier

Fast Company asked entrepreneur and social media expert Cindy Gallop her twitter turn-offs, turn-ons and tips on meeting the right followers. She advises not to waste your time going after followers who aren’t interested in you. But mostly, she just wants you to be yourself.

“Communicate, and project yourself as someone worth following. Be interesting, insightful, entertaining, distinctive, innovative, and you will get retweeted and people will follow you,” Gallop told Fast Company.

If that doesn’t work, you can always send roses.

NFL- Papa John’s Video Is No Super Bowl Shuffle

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones teamed up with Papa John’s in an ill-fated video to rap about the Cowboy’s 5-Star Combo. Just $10.99! See it at Mashable.

How Samsung-Apple Verdict Effects Google

Will there be a backlash for the Android operating system post-verdict? The Verge reports it’s not likely, and that Google is keeping the entire case “at arm’s length.”

“The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims. Most of these don’t relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office,” Google said.

YouTube Totally Knows How You Feel

Moodwall isn’t something from Star Trek, it’s YouTube’s new feature where users are asked to choose videos by “vibe.”

According to the Verge (via The Guardian) categories include ‘Funny,’ ‘Fast,’ and ‘Inspiring.’ It’s unclear how many users can test this right now or whether users will be able to add their own categories.

New York Tech Meetup (NYTM) is the epicenter of New York’s tech scene. The 850 tickets to New York Tech Meetup sell out in minutes each month, and overflow crowds gather at General Assembly and New Work City.

NYTM hit the 25,000-member milestone faster than anyone expected, adding 10,000 members in the previous 15 months alone. That growth mirrors New York Tech’s incredible run of success: Since 2007, VC deals in the New York region have increased by 32 percent, while they’ve decreased by 11 percent nationwide during the same time period, including a 10 percent drop in Silicon Valley.

Back in 2005—when New York’s tech industry ran a far-distant third to Silicon Valley and Boston—no one suspected that it would come to outpace the big boys.

All this growth has come without the help of a major, cohesive project. No one here is building the plumbing for an Internet 2.0. It also comes without the emergence of a signature tech powerhouse. Tumblr and FourSquare have had great success, but they’re no Microsoft, Amazon or Google.

Despite this dearth of tech empires, New York has rapidly emerged as the 2nd-largest tech hub in the world, and a recent study by NYC Future predicts that this exponential success will continue for some time.

The reason? The very nature of New York Tech. In New York, tech companies boost existing dominant industries: media, fashion, finance, art, education and advertising.

Most are providing that boost to existing industries through content.

The vast majority New York tech companies and the startups that demo at New York Tech Meetup are focused on content in some way. They’re helping brands create content, distribute content, share content, optimize content, analyze content, target ads towards content, connect sales to content. Others – like The Huffington Post, Gilt, and Refinery29 –  have created innovative content businesses unlike anything the world has seen.

“We are having a renaissance in New York,” Andrew Rasiej, chair of New York Tech Meetup told NYC Future, “because technology and content are marrying each other.”

The company introduced changes to its mobile ads on Thursday and is making an effort to connect with customers based on their interests.

American Express teamed up with Zumobi to produce the mobile ad aspect of its Membership Effect Campaign, according to Business 2 Community.

The campaign creates “rich experiences for smartphone users personalized to their interests and spending habits plus combine video, user generated content, and social media on smartphones. … Based on responses to a set of interactive prompts in the experience, users can also create a personalized panorama that is tailored to their interests in shopping, dining, electronics or travel.”

Another highlight of the campaign is that card members, if they sync their cards with Foursquare, Twitter, or Facebook, can receive “exclusive savings at select restaurants and retailers,” writes B2C.

In an interview with Mobile Commerce Daily, John SanGiovanni, cofounder and vice president of product design at Zumobi said, “With Gartner predicting that mobile advertising will be a 20.6 billion dollar market by 2015, countless companies are popping up and soliciting easy ways for brands to scale ad campaigns for mobile devices.”

He also said that brands must figure out ways to emotionally connect with customers to get their attention: “As devices become more intuitive, so must our communication.”

Integrating video into its campaign is a smart move for American Express, considering that video ads on mobile devices have a 35 percent higher engagement rate and studies show that personal content is much more engaging to customers.

In December 2011, Explore Chicago surpassed 6 million visits for the year — the highest annual total since its 2009 launch and a 40% increase over 2010, making Explore Chicago the top travel and tourism website for Chicago, based on traffic volume. Not bad for a non-profit website.

Explore Chicago is only one part of the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture’s online offerings, which include a blog, a strong Foursquare presence, and Twitter and Facebook accounts. (In total, the office of tourism is active across nine social media platforms.)

“We are tourism leaders in the realm of social media. We had the very first visitor Concierge Twitter feed. We were the very first tourism agency to work with Foursquare, and we now have a total of four Chicago branded badges — including the Windy City badge, which was the very first city badge that Foursquare produced,” says Pam Morin, director of marketing at the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture.

A Fall 2011 study conducted by Nichols Tourism Group and the National Laboratory of Tourism and eCommerce at Temple University found that Explore Chicago significantly influenced $172 million in direct visitor spending and $3 million in local taxes.

“We’re incredibly proud of this website, that we’re able to do so much with such a small team and such a small budget,” says Morin.

So, how does Explore Chicago manage to generate content for all these feeds and platforms with a staff of just three (two of whom are technology rather than content experts) and a small marketing department?

User-Generated Success

The key to the site’s success, says Morin, is user-generated content.

For example, Explore Chicago has more than 1,000 “cultural partners” throughout the city, who provide them with information on a regular basis via a web form that automatically populates Explore Chicago‘s event listings.

That’s immensely helpful to the Explore Chicago team (which edits each listing before it’s posted), but it’s just scratching the surface of the site’s user-generated success, which spans blog content, photography, and video.

The Explore Chicago Flickr account, for example, has enabled 3,000 photographers to submit photos.

“Photography is incredibly important on a tourism website,” explains Morin. “People want to see where other people have been. This is how people do research on places that they’re going to visit next. They want to see what it is like on the ground, and we just love the instantaneous impact that these photos have,” explains Morin.

ExploreChicago also employs almost 200 volunteer bloggers for the Insider Profiles section of the site, where locals can share their insider knowledge of the city.

“They live in different neighborhoods. They are all different ages. They all have different occupations and hobbies, you name it. They give us their take on Chicago, and we have found that this has been incredibly popular content,” says Morin.

“User-generated content is incredibly important to us. Chicago is an incredibly proud city. People from Chicago love to talk about Chicago. We’ve been so thrilled with how generous people have been with their opinions, and with their thoughts and creating content for us.”

Content Tips

Morin advises content managers to create — and stick to — an editorial calendar.

“We absolutely would not be able to do what we do if we didn’t create an editorial calendar. We have so many things that happen internally, that we would never be able to manage the external information if we weren’t very, very, well-organized,” says Morin.

She also advises content creators not to write a single word of content… until, that is, they have thought through how that content will be used across all the organization’s communications platforms, including Twitter and blogs.

Image courtesy of Explore Chicago

Red Bull, the popular energy drink, supports its content strategy with just that foundation, though, owning its very own Red Bull Media House.

Although Red Bull was founded in 1987 by Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz, the Red Bull Media House was launched in 2007 and produces just about every type of digital and traditional content you could image. It operates a TV station; prints one of the biggest magazines in the world; produces documentaries, movies and music; and runs a very thorough digital strategy, the focus of our interest here. So, here’s how it’s done.

The Beginning

Red Bull headquarters in Salzburg, Austria

Red Bull’s content creation process centers around sports and cultural events and projects, and its strategy has been in the making for nearly 25 years.

The Red Bull team has created a multimedia experience from the start, incorporating film, photography and stories built for broadcast, print and digital media partners.

It wasn’t until 2007, though, when the brand formalized the content production process by launching Red Bull Media House. Headquartered in Salzburg, Austria with a North American base extended to Santa Monica, Calif. in January 2011, the media house controls the production, collection and distribution processes for all Red Bull content. Today, Red Bull Media House employs more than 400 people around the world.

Going Big with Digital Content

A screenshot of the Red Bull TV iPhone App

When it comes to digital media, Red Bull Media House runs more than 900 domains in 36 languages under the umbrella of RedBull.com.

RedBull.com covers all of its digital bases, with an offering of web TV, web radio, online games, newsfeeds and digital databases.

And if you’re curious about where all of Red Bull’s iPhone and iPad apps come from, you guessed it, the Media House is in charge of building and launching Red Bull’s mobile apps. Stop by the App Store some time to check out the Red Bull TV iPhone app or the Red Bulletin and Red Bull Illume HD apps for iPad — with them, you’ll have a pretty in-depth look at some of the most visual content created by Red Bull’s very own media empire. For a look at one of its mobile app games, check out Red Bull X-Fighters.

As it has carved a niche in the sports arena, Red Bull is associated with competitiveness and games – thus, it has launched a number of games accessible via Facebook or RedBull.com, where the games are hosted. One of the more visually-pleasing and simply adorable offerings in the line-up is the Soapbox Racer game.

Getting Social

Red Bull checking into its Red Bull Crashed Ice 2012 event on Foursquare

The Media House also takes care of Red Bull’s social media strategy, including the brand’s presences on Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, YouTube and its plethora of Facebook Pages.

YouTube is perhaps Red Bull’s biggest social strong suit. It joined as one of YouTube’s inaugural action sports content producers. And to date, nearly 300 million YouTube views have been generated from Red Bull content, making Red Bull Media House one of the top five sports content producers on YouTube globally.

This month, Red Bull upped the ante by launching 13 new episodic series to its YouTube channel. These shows will chronicle the day-to-day lives and competitions of some of the world’s most popular athletes from a variety of sports, including skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, motorcross star Travis Pastrana, surfer Jamie O’Brien and trials cyclist Danny MacAskill.

Across the rest of the socialverse, Red Bull stays active, interacting with tweeters, checking in to sports events and of course, disseminating content.

Red Bull seems to be benefiting from operating its very own media company. Have you heard of any other non-media brands with separate media operations? If so, let us know about them in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Red Bull