If a diner at Sharkeez stacks his chips into a tower and takes a picture of it, he might be angling for a free order of chips and queso. Then, if he strolls over to Fat Face Fenner’s Fishack and names a drink after a Boston sports star, he might be trying to score two free fish tacos.
Customers with iPhones or Android phones can get discounts and even free stuff playing a social-network game called Scvngr, pronounced “scavenger,” in at least 11 businesses in Hermosa Beach and three in Manhattan Beach. A Blackberry application for the game is soon to follow.
(Find the game at www.scvngr.com.)
The creators of Scvngr, which is backed by $4 million from Google Ventures, have made a push into Hermosa, Manhattan, Santa Monica, Hollywood and Pasadena with their phone-based marketing, which is free to initial-launch businesses but in time will cost the businesses a fee.
As the customers respond to the game’s “challenges,” the businesses are promoted with postings on Facebook, Twitter and “the scavenger community,” said Justin Schaeffer, whose job title is “professional American” in a Scvngr outfit whose co-founder goes by “chief ninja.”
“The challenges are creating a social network buzz for the businesses – instant, direct marketing, and rewarding the customers for their loyalty,” he said.
Some of the challenges reward repeated trips to a business. The game must be played at the businesses; a typical game “challenge” might ask the player to snap a phone photo of a retro poster on the wall of a restaurant, which can’t be done anywhere else.
Scvngr also is making a push into San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York City.
“We’re focusing on areas where there is concentrated foot traffic and numbers of young professionals, people who are technology savvy,” Schaeffer said. “We would love to spread throughout the Los Angeles region eventually.”
A launch party Oct. 20 at Sharkeez in downtown Hermosa formally christened the local Scvngr presence. Scvngr businesses tell customers that “Scvngr is played here” with window stickers, table tents, coffee-cup sleeves and the like.
Google counts show hundreds of thousands of people playing Scvngr, Schaeffer said.
Local Scvngr businesses include Sharkeez, Fenner’s, Gum Tree boutique and café, Beachy Keen Bay, Four Daughters Kitchen, Silvio’s Brazilian BBQ, Paciugo Gelato Café, Shark’s Cove and Becker’s Bakery.
Scvngr also can be used to explore hundreds of institutions, such as museums and universities that have signed on. Those institutions were Scvngr’s first targets before the company expanded into the store-restaurant-coffee house game.
For more information, see www.scvngr.com. ER
