Smart Location-Based Marketing By Home Depot

Update: Sigh — turns out Ben was just larking around — my dreams are crushed. Still, even though this was a prank (#DammitLucier!), this is the sort of things that retailers who are starting to play around with location-based loyalty marketing should be considering.

Just saw this photo on my friend Ben Lucier’s Posterous site – hardware retailer Home Depot reserved a parking spot for him at his local store in the “Pro” parking section. Why? Because he was the mayor.

Smart way to reward their most loyal customer (well, the most loyal customer using Foursquare, anyway) with something that has zero cost to Home Depot but a nice benefit for the customer, all the while encouraging other people to compete for that benefit.

Dave Fleet
Managing Director and Head of Global Digital Crisis at Edelman. Husband and dad of two. Cycling nut; bookworm; videogamer; Britnadian. Opinions are mine, not my employer's.