Café Joe, a chain of coffee houses, is running a newspaper campaign featuring the barcodes.
An Israeli coffee house chain, Café Joe, has just released its latest advertising campaign, which includes QR codes as a major step into mobile commerce for the company.
When the barcode is scanned, it directs the newspaper readers to a free coffee offer.
The QR codes are printed in local newspapers so that the readers can scan them with their smartphones in order to obtain a coupon for a free cup of coffee at Café Joe. From there, they can head to a location and redeem this digital coupon to receive the product at no cost to them.
The QR codes campaign is quite widespread as the company is one of the largest coffee chains in Israel.
The café chain feels that this QR codes campaign is a natural fit, as people enjoy drinking coffee as they read the newspaper. This way, Café Joe is encouraging consumers to choose their specific coffee and products while they read the paper, as opposed to opting for one of their competitors’ locations.
What makes this campaign unique is that it is a location based print ad, not just a scan that sends the smartphone owner to a mobile commerce site or specific product page. When the QR code is scanned, the consumer is not only provided with a free coffee, but the GPS of the device is used in order to provide that smartphone user with the address of the nearest café location. Furthermore, they also receive a Google Map that will provide them with the fastest route to arrive at that location from where they are currently standing.
This not only brings customers into a Café Joe’s shop that one time, but because they have used the QR code to find the location nearest to them, they will also know how to get there the next time they’d like a coffee. They are hoping that people will begin to build a habit around reading the paper with a coffee from one of their stores, and they are attempting to use mobile commerce to achieve that goal.
