Gold Star to M&S for QR Campaign

A gold star goes to Marks & Spencer for trying to engage more with their customers with the trialling of mobile QR codes on their ‘Food to Go’ freshly squeezed juices.

What, you may ask, are QR codes?

Not as it may appear a weird layout for a new type of puzzle, but a neat way of offering consumers product information and money off future purchases that has proved to be very popular in Japan. All you need to do is scan the QR code on the bottle with your phone’s camera and you will be directed to a ‘Food to Go’ mobile site which features a range of content and a voucher code to claim against your next bottle of juice.

It’s not the first time it has been tried in the UK; The Sun used them last year to drive traffic to their mobile site via an eight page pull-out section in the newspaper. This was then followed by campaigns from brands like the BBC, Pepsi and Volvo. However, there has been a small hitch in the development of the format over here due to a lack of QR code readers that are automatically embedded in UK phones. Small but potentially significant problem. It will be interesting to see how it works for them. If you’re an M & S freshly squeezed juice fan, you could save yourself a fortune so it might be worth checking your phone does have it!

Consumers may be a difficult target in the short term but one area that QR codes should take off in is at the good old trade fair. Maximising the huge investment that it takes to attend these shows could ensure that B2B clients think about providing mobile QR codes on their stands as a novel way to provide a direct link to mobile phone formatted information with order forms and product information. It would certainly make you stand out from the crowd! Keep an eye out for future QR developments as they may well be the key to the success of your campaign…

Jill Thater
Client Services Director