Back in April, we covered a mobile barcode campaign sponsored by Sports Illustrated that used JagTag’s technology to turn its annual Swimsuit Edition into an interactive experience. At the time, the campaign represented the most successful and largest deployment of mobile barcodes to date in the US — achieving over 100,000 scans.
A new campaign by Allure magazine achieved nearly four times the response using Microsoft’s proprietary mobile barcode technology to secure nearly 450,000 scans. The campaign, which allowed readers to enter a number of free giveaways, is now the largest mobile barcode campaign to date. Allure teamed with Microsoft to embed 39 mobile barcodes in its August issue, promoting 159 separate giveaways of beauty products worth $725,000.
When a user scanned any one of the barcodes, they received a text-message reminder 15 minutes before the giveaways on a certain page. In addition, A “master” Microsoft Tag in the back of the magazine and on its Website could be scanned for a chance to win any or all of the giveaways. Allure said it saw a 38 percent increase in the number of participants due to the barcodes, and said users were 2.5-times as active as PC users.
The campaign represented the largest consumer deployment of Microsoft Tags to date, which provided a much needed boost to the company’s proprietary technology that many have deemed useless as so many open barcode technologies exist. “Allure magazine and Microsoft Tag are collaborating together to take mobile marketing to a whole new level,” said Anna Kim-Williams, senior global media strategist of the Startup Business Group at Microsoft. “The strategy behind the Microsoft Tags was to make the magazine mobile for Allure readers and more specifically, to extend the annual August giveaway to mobile users.
