Redbox partners with foursquare

Twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred. That’s the number of redbox venues you’ll now find cluttering your foursquare app. The ubiquitous DVD rental kiosks that take up less than ten square feet of space are all now on foursquare — and soon you’ll be able to unlock deals there.

Redbox is set to begin offering discounts to foursquare users during their 10 Days of Deals campaign. Foursquare will distribute unique codes that will unlock discounts ranging from a whopping 10 cents all the way up to $1. The deals will be available August 15–24 at redbox kiosks nationwide.

“With more than 27,800 locations nationwide, mobile allows redbox to hyper-localize our engagement efforts,” said Amy Gibby, vice president of marketing, redbox. “Foursquare significantly expands our mobile touch points and unlocks new ways for consumers to engage with redbox at local kiosks.”

If you think the Great Clips “specials” that clutter the foursquare Explore screen are bad, just wait until you see these pop up. The 3,000 Great Clips stores pale in comparison to what we’ll see from redbox during the 10 Days of Deals campaign.

As you can tell, I’m of the opinion that a redbox shouldn’t even be considered a foursquare venue. Every one of them is located either inside or adjacent to another venue and they’re never somewhere you’d actually “hang out” so it doesn’t make sense to create separate venues for them.

Deals at every redbox kiosk — if they’re publicized somewhere other than foursquare itself — could serve to expose a good number of redbox customers to the foursquare platform, but, in my opinion, it’s not worth the clutter the deals will create for other foursquare users.

UPDATE: We’ve received a response from Eric Friedman, foursquare’s Director of Business Development:

“We found that tens of thousands of check-ins were happening at unclaimed redbox venues, so we knew our audience already wanted to engage with redbox on foursquare. This partnership makes all redbox locations official. On top of that, the 10 Days of Deals campaign gives consumers a great reason to check in at them August 15-24.”

Additionally, foursquare will not be handing out the unique codes necessary to unlock the discounts. Users will be instructed to text a number that will return their unique discount code.

What do you think of the redbox deals?

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