News: Agency

Neiman Launches New Tool to Help Holiday Visitors Avoid Long Lines 20 Top NYC Attractions

This holiday season, tourists have a new tool to help them - GoCrowdless.com. Created by the same team of brand-conversation thinkers and creative developers who brought you PhillySteakout.com, Go Crowdless aggregates Foursquare "check-in" data at 20 of New York's most popular holiday attractions, to help travellers predict when crowds are likely to be smallest - and the busiest hours to avoid.

"Every day, millions of people are 'checking in' using the Foursquare app on their smartphones," said George Ward, VP of Innovation and director of Neiman Labs, Neiman's in-house R&D unit. "For most, Foursquare is just a fun way to let their friends know what they're up to. But by developing a system that allows us to aggregate and sort that check-in data, we have turned their fun check-ins into a powerful tourist resource. Foursquare data is not a perfect proxy for the overall population. But it's a helpful snapshot. By simply visiting GoCrowdless.com before planning their day, visitors to New York can make a more informed judgment on when to avoid the worst ice skating crowds at Rockefeller Center or the best time to visit Santa at Macy's."

Data aggregation on GoCrowdless.com began on Black Friday. At today's launch, the site has just one week of data. "As we move into December and collect more and more data, the more accurate and more useful GoCrowdless.com will become," Ward said.

"GoCrowdless is our holiday gift to New York City travelers, from the curious thinkers at Neiman Labs," said Neiman CEO Tim Reeves. "It's unusual for an agency our size to have an R&D unit. But Neiman Labs is a great investment. It's an outlet for our creative thinkers. And it's our opportunity to create and experiment today with the brand-conversation strategies and technologies that our clients will need tomorrow."

About Neiman and Neiman Labs

Neiman is a brand-conversation agency with offices in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, PA. Neiman clients include Capital BlueCross, Dietz & Watson, the National Constitution Center, Sunoco and Trex.
GoCrowdless.com is the sixth project from Neiman Labs, the R&D unit at Neiman. This summer, Neiman Labs launched PhillySteakout.com - a website ranking Philadelphia's cheesesteak joints. It was Neiman Labs first foray into Foursquare data aggregation. PhillySteakout.com shows which spots are tourist destinations and which are secret local favorites - a potentially powerful tool for tourism and destination marketers. "Every city needs something like this," tweeted the co-founder of Foursquare after SteakOut launched. Other Neiman Labs projects include Social Sweets, a social media experiment that provided branded chocolate bars to Philadelphians in exchange for a Facebook 'thank you' - each resulting in a donation to a local food bank; the Neiman Globe, a glass office transformed into a holiday human snow globe with liveaccess to Neiman's social network via Facebook; an iPad app designed specifically for consumer intercepts that allows for quick and easy data compilation; and Phever, the first-ever live, minute-to-minute social-media record of Phillies games, powered by Phillies fans.