Imagine this: you visit your local supermarket and are asked to support a local food pantry. You buy a pinup for a buck. On your receipt is message that you can learn more about the cause you just supported by scanning this barcode with your Smartphone.
In your car before you leave the supermarket parking lot you run your iPhone over the barcode and a one minute video airs on a food pantry like no other. It’s run out of your local hospital. The pantry started by feeding a few thousand patients every year. In 2009 it fed 75,000 men, women and children. The video closes with an image of a food line that snakes down the hallway and around the corner. It is after all the busiest day of the year, the day before Thanksgiving.
Wow.
The cool thing is that you don’t have imagine this happening. It already is. In a recent tweet there was an article on how two U.K. groups are using barcodes, RFID tags or QR Codes, as they are most commonly called, to add personal history to donated items. (Note: What a great idea for Goodwill!)
Think of the potential for cause marketers to make transactional programs less, well, transactional and more meaningful. When you pick up a mug at Starbucks that supports Product (RED) you can scan the QR code to hear the story of a man who benefited directly from the life-saving HIV drugs RED provides and Starbucks funds.
But that’s not all. Supporters can scan the barcode and use their smartphone to record why they support Product (RED), which then can be viewed by the next person who holds the mug up to a smartphone.
Consumers scanning QR codes for cause content will not happen overnight. But adopting QR codes encourages cause marketers to do two important things.
- It helps build a stronger charitable and emotional connection among causes, businesses and consumers. (QR codes should also make cause marketing critics feel better that CM gifts aren’t thoughtless one-offs.)
- It prepares us for the mobile web. The portable technology that Red Laser represents and the type of mobile content it links to is the future for which we should all be preparing. Don’t you agree?
Article Written By Joe Waters
Interested in learning how QR Codes can help with your business marketing, fundraising, or cause marketing? Contact Stephane B. Jean-Baptiste of Nouveau Concepts to learn about how QR Codes can work for you.
NOUVEAU CONCEPTS, LLC (NC) is a graphic design and marketing studio
that offers the personality of a small design firm with the benefit of BIG ideas
and remarkable talent. Our work ranges from corporate brand identity to
donor appeals, promotional collateral, consulting and websites. What we create is
driven by the tenacity to generate the results our clients want.
