Blog: HMV uses FourSquare to promote Hunger Games release

Entertainment retailer HMV used location-based social media platform FourSquare at events over the weekend to mark today’s DVD release of The Hunger Games.

The retailer used the film’s plot as inspiration and asked thousands of fans to ‘volunteer’ themselves as their ‘district’s tribute’ by checking into one of 12 HMV stores on FourSquare.

The events were also promoted on Twitter using #HMVreaping.

Winners were selected from those who had checked in and prizes were handed out. The winners, or ‘tributes’, will, as in the film, travel to London to represent their store at a ‘live reaping’ to be held in ‘Capitol City’ (HMV’s flagship Oxford Street store) to compete to win tickets to the film premiere.

While the competition might seem confusing to the uninitiated, for devotees the campaign is perfectly aligned with the film and positions HMV as a retailer for true fans. The events not only build hype for the film’s release but also drive footfall, invaluable for HMV.

• See more pictures from the events here