Visa, not to be left out in the largest mobile conference around, utilized 2D barcodes to create a unique mobile sweepstakes campaign to attendees of this year’s Mobile World Congress.
Partnering with Neustar, the company initiated a call-to-action by way of encouraging attendees to download a barcode reader, as well as giving each attendee a faux Visa gift card as part of their welcome packets. The Visa cards were equipped with 2D barcodes on the back, and attendees were encouraged to scan the code each day to enter a “Check Your Balance” sweepstakes to win 50 euros.
As part of the promotion, attendees were asked to answer a question testing their creativity, with the most creative answers winning a Visa gift card every 30 minutes from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily. Questions like; “Answer the simple question: More people go with Visa. Where would you like to go with your Visa card? Simple, but an effective way to engage the group-aspect of the event.
“Visa recognizes the power of these mobile bar codes,” said Diane Strahan, vice president of mobile services at Neustar. “A barcode is a call-to-action—it’s saying scan me, snap a picture of me, and brands love it because it’s a call-to-action that takes you straight up the marketing value chain. A barcode encourages consumers to take action, and Visa likes it because it can take you all the way to commerce. Barcodes can take consumers from awareness, interest and desire to action, from a payments and mobile money transfer perspective.”
Even with Visa’s use of 2D barcodes, there still wasn’t much interest in mobile barcoding technology at this year’s MWC. No major announcements were made in terms of the technology, and the concept didn’t seem to be as present as I thought it would, especially given the international dominance of the showcase providers and companies. Even so, Visa’s campaign was innovative, unique and surely successful. I wish we could see more campaigns like this from major brands.
