Shopkick Announces Major Brand Partners, as shopkick Users Pass Six and a Half Million Product Scans

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick, the largest location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for walking into stores, today announced great momentum in its work with consumer brands, crediting its unique 'real world click' advertising model as the source of its success. In just three months, 12 new large branded product manufacturers have joined shopkick's Partner Alliance: CoverGirl, Disney, General Mills, Levi's, Libman, Mead Johnson, Meguiar's, Mr. Clean, Olay, Revlon, Tilex and Trident. In addition to the new brand partners, shopkick users have scanned products from existing brand partners – Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, HP and Intel – more than 6.5 million times, at 250,000 stores nationwide.

With shopkick, brand interactions happen right in the store, and they go well beyond scanning and rewards. Shopkick delivers rewards for numerous types of measurable ways shoppers discover and connect with new and familiar brands and products. People can view recipes, watch videos, answer questions, go on scan missions and more, prompting frequent exposure to partner brand products that spans the buying cycle – and resulting in great insight for brand partners on what drives customer engagement and decisions.

"Shopkick really gets how important it is for consumers to touch, see and feel the product and the role it plays in driving sales," said Ed Kaczmarek, Director of Innovation, New Services at Kraft Foods. "Through shopkick we can guide shoppers to our products on the store shelves, even across multiple aisles, and then reward them for checking them out,"

The most popular category of scanned items is Electronics, closely followed by Food and Beverage. These interactions are taking place at all types of stores – from national retailers to the corner store. Four of shopkick's current retail partners – Best Buy, Target, American Eagle and Macy's – are on the list of the Top 10 stores where the most product scans take place.

"Shopping and the ability to influence the path to purchase are being redefined by mobile and shopkick is leading the way. For the first time, a brand has the opportunity to have a dialogue and direct a conversation with shoppers that starts outside the store, continues into the store, at the aisle and ultimately when the product is in hand." said Jeff Sellinger, co-founder and CPO of shopkick. "Shopkick's personalization delivers a more exact science because we can target exactly the right users, shopping categories and stores. Our 'real-world click' advertising model is the best of both worlds – brands define the actions they want consumers to take, and only pay when a consumer takes the desired action – as a result it is a far more cost effective spend than traditional ad channels."

In addition to earning rewards for interacting partner brand products, rewards are also available for simply walking into the more than 2,500 retail and 160 mall locations that make up shopkick's Retail Partner Network, using shopkick's proprietary shopkick Signal technology. Walk-in rewards are currently available in all 50 states at select Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters, Sports Authority, Crate and Barrel, Wet Seal, west elm and Simon Property Group mall locations.  

In order to provide high-value rewards to consumers for actual walk-ins, the shopkick app, combined with the shopkick Signal – an inaudible sound emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating retailer – verifies a user is in-store. This ensures that marketing dollars put into the shopkick program are being spent to reward customers who are actually present in the store, something not possible with traditional location-based applications which rely on GPS technology that has an error radius of 50-1,000 yards on mobile phones. And, because the detection occurs on the user's mobile device, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.

Launched in August 2010, shopkick quickly became the largest location-based shopping app in America and reached 2 million users within a record 11 months since its launch. The shopkick App is available for free on the iPhone from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore/and on Android Market at http://shopkick.com/android.html

About shopkick, Inc.

shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins' iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers high-value rewards, offers and exclusive deals at shopkick's national retail partners simply for walking into stores and malls. Even more rewards can be earned for scanning partner brand products at over 250,000 stores nationwide. In combination with a groundbreaking new location technology called "shopkick Signal", the app can verify location within feet, and because the detection occurs on the phone, privacy of presence information is completely in the users' control. Shopkick's growing partner alliance includes Best Buy, Macy's, Target, American Eagle, Crate & Barrel, The Sports Authority, Wet Seal, West Elm, Simon Property Group, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Intel, HP and The CW. shopkick is the only 100% performance-based marketing platform in the physical retail world, with measurable foot traffic and transactions at stores. The app grew to 2 million users in its first 11 months. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.

SOURCE shopkick, Inc.