Wendr “Stop Checking In”
Billboard
Stop checking in. Start hanging out!
Displayed at SXSW 2012 for the launch of Wendr — the “find your night” iPhone app co-founded by Sam Zises and Nick Kaye (Co-Founder & Chief Engineer/Creative). Photography by Dan Zimmer. The creative: a daytime block party overflowing the stoop of a green Victorian rowhouse — DJ rig in the bay window under the green “w” app icon, a woman on the window ledge, disco ball over the door, a vuvuzela, an inner tube, a forest of red cups — with the tagline in chunky white type on black bars. The billboard doesn’t show the app. It shows the result of the app, at 100% density.
It was launch season, so here’s the launch diary:
FEB 13 2012 Public launch at Social Media Week NYC — “so you can stop 'checking-in' and start hanging out”
MAR 2012 SXSW, Austin — this billboard
2012 Wins Thrillist + Samsung's “Speed Dating for Startups” (100+ applicants; judges incl. Ben Lerer) — “the most technologically advanced”
2012 Wins Budweiser's startup pitch (300 applied) → powers the “Grab Some Buds” app
DEC 2012 “Wendr powered by BlackBerry” launches across Latin America
~MAY 2013 The farewell letter. Fifteen months, fully lived.
The tagline was the company thesis wearing an exclamation point: Foursquare-era social software had turned presence into paperwork — you proved you were somewhere instead of being there. Wendr’s whole pitch, and this board’s whole copy, was the correction.
This billboard is the out-of-home sibling of the Wendr “Vallery Girl” :30 spot — one launch, two media. Epilogue: the team evolved into [L]earned Media, whose first clients included a certain magician already in this portfolio.
A decade before the manifesto wrote presence over avoidance down, this billboard was shouting the consumer version of it at Austin traffic. Avoidance had a UI in 2012, and it was the check-in button. The correction still stands: attention matters. Go where your body is.
