The auto manufacturer is running a massive print campaign in Peru to help to inform drivers.
Toyota has launched a massive campaign in Peru that has been carefully crafted to appeal to the many smartphone using drivers in that country, through the use of QR codes that they can scan using any free reader app.
The campaign is meant to help to encourage safer driving through the sharing of important information.
With the QR codes in the Toyota road safety campaign, drivers can become more aware of the specific dangers that are posed by the use of a smartphone while driving. This campaign is cleverly designed to use the smartphone as a part of the education process because it speaks specifically to the users of the devices.
The QR codes are a central part of both the campaign and the awareness of the danger from the device used to scan them.
The print campaign was made up of images of obstacles in the middle of a road with QR codes displayed on them. When those barcodes were scanned, it allows the user to download a fascinating augmented reality app.
The name of the application was the QR Road App. By running the app, the user can watch the obstacle disappear from the picture on the page, and it is replaced by the message “When you use your smartphone, you can’t really see what’s on the road.”
The QR codes application had already been downloaded more than 120,000 times at the time of the writing of this article. This ranks it among the twenty apps that have been the most successful in the history of Peru. This is precisely the type of use of the barcodes that mobile marketers have been trying to encourage for years, as there has been considerable controversy as to whether or not the technology is worthwhile and effective.
The history of the technology of QR codes goes back to Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota, so it makes great sense that it would be this same auto manufacturer that would put it to such outstanding use more than two decades later. Supporters of the technology can only hope that other marketers will learn from proper usage such as this so that the barcodes can continue to thrive.
