By Matt Barnett

So I just loaded Roamler on to my phone. Roamler is a secret shopper app. You give a consumer eye-level account of brands and retailers and in return you get rewards, including, points and badges (a la Foursquare). But what you also get is cash. Most of the tasks involved ask you to answer questions and post photos. Right now I have a task that I've accepted to go into a bar, order a Heineken and take a picture of it. For that I'm promised £3.50. But to be fair, some of the pubs in The City charge more than that, so I'm at best breaking even. I know, it's a free pint for when I'm out with the boys, but on the surface of it, its feels like a big ask.

Initially, and I've only been playing with it for the last few days, it does seem an app too far; the balance seems very much in favour of the brands and not the shopper. One thing that does seem to be working however is that because of the way Roamler sets the tasks up, you do tend to remember to do them, even without them sending reminders or checking your phone. So when heading to Wapping yesterday and the Olympic rings on Tower Bridge came into view, I took a pic and posted on Roamler as it was one of my outstanding tasks.

Cheating the tasks does also seem to be managed too; for instance, the Heineken bottle task does make you take one from your phone as opposed to one quickly copied from Google Images. Although if you really wanted to swerve it, you could potentially buy one bottle and have 4 mates take a pic of the same bottle to get the £14.00 between you. 

STOP PRESS - I was going to write at this point that "given current awareness of the app though, I'm guessing mal-redemptions like this would be more welcomed than not right now" - BUT, it seems that someone is checking the pics/uploads one by one. The duplicate or "google pinched" pics I've tried to upload are getting rejected with a polite but slightly humorous note (from Fleur and Merel) suggesting I'd copied the pic. Quite how this is being checked without the need for 100 image police is perhaps Roamler's "secret sauce" recipe.  But it's likely to be one key thing that makes brands trust them to do their qualitative research.

With qualitative research, and in particular consumer panels, under increasing pressure to show realistic results, and the need for brands to see their labels  in action or live across multiple sites, it does seem like a great app to them, and their agencies! As an agency we'd love to be able to see more of our point of sale work in play across all the different stores we can't get to - this app could provide that. So all good from a brand point of view. My biggest concern though, is the rewards. These seem pretty low for the shopper right now. Hopefully this will change as more brands come on board because its potential to provide "near live" in-store/at-bar retail feedback is enormous.

Matt Barnett is director of digital at MARS\Y&R, The Shopper Marketing Agency...and now the proud holder of the Roamler Lazyboy badge.