August 24th, 2009

QR Code Qriosity: Ideas to demonstrate their potential (part 2)

amor

Following on from last week’s post where we explored how Spektacle Magazine used QR codes to create dynamic content, this week we’ll be looking into another interesting campaign undertaken by DDB Brazil for the Brazilian online bookstore, Editoras Online. This campaign cleverly integrates social media, crowd sourcing, mobile marketing, guerilla marketing, and online to position Editoras uniquely as an innovative and emotive brand. In this campaign QR codes are central to the entire strategy and work as the glue that brings each tactic together to create a truly integrated campaign.

The Tactics:

  1. Guerilla Marketing. 4,000 posters were put up around São Paulo featuring a QR code and the phrase “here’s a moment of love” or “here’s a moment of hate.” 200 different QR codes were used on the posters. This form of guerilla marketing was chosen over traditional advertising to appeal to young people’s curiosity, capture their attention, create buzz, and drive word of mouth.
  2. Social Media + Mobile. When people scanned the QR code a sentence on love or hate from Twitter is revealed with a call to action driving people to the Editoras website. A system was designed to pull in messages from Twitter containing the words “amor” (“love”) and “odio” (“hate”). Every week the URLs attached to each of the codes is updated to feature a new “love” or “hate” message.
  3. Crowd Sourcing. Editoras created their own 200 page “Living Book” on the topics of love and hate, featuring a series of QR Codes which are updated every week with the randomly love or hate messages from Twitter. The books can only be purchased from the Editoras online store and go for R$30 (approx 20 Aussie dollars).
  4. Online + Social Media. The Amor e Ódio microsite features a love Twitter feed and a hate Twitter feed that pull in love and hate messages from Twitter. The campaign’s blog contains information explaining the campaign, QR codes, and latest updates. The Flickr account contains images of the QR code posters up and around town. The campaign also has it’s own Twitter presence; yet this was a little disappointing as it severely lacks content, conversations, and interactivity (they only have 8 tweets to their name).

This video explains the campaign pretty comprehensively:

I think this campaign truly demonstrates the potential of these odd looking codes. It show how QR codes can be used to seamlessly integrate traditional touch points with emerging media and drive consumers across media effortlessly. Moreover, it shows how successful brands can be when they truly open themselves up to contributions from users (i.e. in this case random messages on love and hate from Twitter) and how technology can be used to create a unique brand experience. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of QR codes if used in these kinds of ways.

Next week I’ll be looking at QR Codes in the world of Pop Culture, Art, and Fashion. To stay up to date with this series of posts on QR codes, simply subscribe to the RSS feed.

Part 3 of this series is now available. Click here to view this post.
About The Defectors

Jenine Wong is a Director of The Defectors. The Defectors are a boutique marketing agency specialising in social media marketing, intelligent web design & development, SEO, email marketing and online marketing.

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