Although both companies offer the same services, its obvious that Yelp is dominating over their rival, Foursquare, when it comes being the preferred business review site. Yelp makes it clear that their target audience is those people who want to make the best of an unfavorable situation. The strength in their ad campaign comes from not only being humorous but also the way the actors are asked to pose for the video. They’re engaging with the audience looking straight at them, almost as if they’re talking directly to them, and keeping their faces brightly lit even while they’re in a dark area.
The Foursquare ad on the other hand aims their ads towards the general audience.Their ads feature two people, both with different ideas of what they want to see, do or eat. There is less humor and they try to use word play as their niche to keep the audience interested. I personally fin the campaign to be much weaker than Yelp’s since it fails to explain the importance of their service, and having a tagline that doesn’t resonate with the photography, or the people in it.
I agree that the combination of the humor and the direct engagement of the narrator with the audience appeals to a broader audience. The foursquare ad as you point out depends on wordplay. Who is the audience for this?