I’m currently in Las Vegas where our company is running an event. Last night, starving, we headed to I Love Burgers at the Palazzo. After placing our orders we settled in for the standard restaurant wait, that’s always as hard as you are hungry.
However, as I glanced down at the table, I noticed this:
As much as they get a bad rap, my eye is always drawn to QR codes. I wonder what they link to, if it’s something interesting or exciting. In this case, it was:
I was floored by how simple and brilliant this was. In restaurants there is always a wait time for food, of varying times. Your entertainment options in this period are limited, unless you want to talk to your companions (ugh!). To have something fun and free like Trivial Pursuit on offer in that wait time is a no-brainer.
But wait, it gets smarter—the whole thing is actually a gamified lead generation campaign. When you scan the QR code you are taken to the Heinz Trivial Pursuit site where you have to enter your email to continue. Now, you’re an official lead.
Don’t go anywhere, though—there’s still more! As you play you earn coupons for special offers on both Heinz and Hasbro products—now you might use your coupon to go and purchase a product yourself.
Nope, not done yet – to claim your coupon, you answer a couple of market research questions, including this one:
Aha! The answer to this question is irrelevant—what they’ve prompted you to do is think about asking for Heinz Ketchup next time you’re at a restaurant.
This is such an awesomely comprehensive campaign. The key, though, is it hinges on the gamification element. If they just had a QR code that gave you a discount coupon you likely wouldn’t want to give them your email address (not a big enough reward); you wouldn’t consider asking specifically for this brand of ketchup at a restaurant; and you wouldn’t associate the brand with fun and good times.
By adding the Trivial Pursuit element they now cover all those bases. I imagine they’ve built a very decent list off this campaign alone, and it’s really something very simple—the website is pretty basic, making a QR code is as easy as pie. The genius is in all the different elements that they’ve brought together, and all the information that they’re gathering.
Gamification has the power to completely revolutionise your marketing efforts. How can you learn from Heinz and incorporate something similar into your business?