npMarketing Blog: Fourth Place Marketing

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Fourth Place Marketing

Ok - so I'm sort of stealing (just a little)... I've been thinking a lot about how we extend our marketing out beyond our virtual borders - trying to meet people in their own networks and communities online and came up with something I'm calling "The Fourth Place" - which extends Starbucks Third Place concept.

I'm going to use this concept as the core concept in my WOMMA presentation that starts in just a few minutes and see how it floats. The idea is that online, our Third Place (like Starbucks) are our own web properties (web site, BBS, blog, etc...). Third Place sites are ones that we tightly control, have moderators watching and are generally built and paid for by us.

Fourth Places (I'm trying so hard not to type Web 2.0), are those virtual places online that are their own, self-sustained communities that we want to reach out to and partner with. For example, we created a Team In Training profile on Myspace.com and partnered with an existing group to bring in additional users and to take advantage of existing discussions. 173 or so friends have connected to us - who we reach out to through a new myspace blog. The thinking is really - how do we embed ourselves in existing communities in order to accomplish our mission, extend our brand and raise more money for research?

Additional Fourth Places we are reaching out to include Youtube (165 PSA views), Frapper (64 members) and Mapmyrun.com - check them out.

Here's a slide from my presentation that represents this concept (sort of small, but you can download the full size graphic if you like):