7 most innovative QR code campaigns

QR codes have taken off in recent years as companies have found creative ways to integrate them into campaigns. Marketers use them for incentivizing consumer participation, discounting, tracking, branding, or purely to capture consumers’ attention.

Like this edible QR cupcake, QR codes can be used to interact with customers in new and innovative ways (photo by clevercupcakes used under a Creative Commons license).

While many codes are used in stunt ways, such as breaking the world record for the largest human QR code, or forming a working QR code made from a corn maze, some campaigns find a perfect marriage of functionality and innovation.

Below is a roundup of seven of the most original QR code campaigns:

• Gulf News, the highest circulating English newspaper in and around the United Arab Emirates, is using QR codes in a new and exciting way. They create coffee cup sleeves for local cafes, printed on demand, that contain a QR code-embedded headline pulled from the newspaper’s live Twitter stream. The code links to the full story of the headline on the Gulf News website.

A Gulf News coffee cup sleeve, at Tim Horton’s Cafe, with an embedded QR code showing the latest headlines (via gulfnews.com).

• Google’s Favorite Places

campaign identified over 100,000 businesses in the U.S. as “Favorite Places on Google” based on Google users’ interaction with local business listings. Each business received a window decal with a unique QR code that you can scan with your phone and instantly learn more about the business.

Google’s Favorite Places QR codes help people learn more about local business listings (image by Best Western River North Hotel Chicago).

• Brancott Estate, a winery in New Zealand, has recently released an app for scanning QR codes placed on the winery’s bottles. The code, which hangs around the bottleneck, provides descriptions of aromas, suggested food pairings and even some information about the vineyard in which the wine was produced.

• Mountain Dew and Taco Bell partnered in 2011 by placing QR codes on drink cups. Customers who scanned the codes received free music and videos from Mountain Dew Green Label Sound, a program dedicated to showcasing emerging recording artists. Ten different Green Label artists – one per week – were featured during the course of the promotion. The campaign earned the companies more than 200,000 downloads.

• BikeGuard is a free bike registry that provides unique QR codes to identify bikes in case of theft or accident. Its goal is to reduce the number of stolen bicycles across the U.S. and assist the police in the recovery of stolen bikes.

BikeGuard asset tags have a unique QR code that help the police locate the owners of stolen bikes (photo by Robert Hoste).

• Clevercupcakes, a bakery based in Montreal, has created the world’s first cupcake embedded with a working, and edible, QR code. If you take a picture of it on your smartphone, you’ll end up at the website of the Montreal Science Center. Clever cupcakes indeed!
• Yoobi, a London sushi restaurant, was scheduled to open in March 2012. While the store was under construction, the owners took the opportunity to reach out to consumers early by displaying QR codes on vibrant, printed fish. Once scanned, the codes allowed smart phone users to obtain discounts and view promotions for their grand opening. 

Category: QR codes