QR Facebook likes in retail

50 million blue thumbs are clicked for brands in- and outside of Facebook every day.* While strolling around the web people ‘like’ sites of brands, just as specific pages of certain products or services. When visiting brand spaces – e.g. flagship stores – individuals can share their experiences with friends through Facebook’s ‘Places’ service. But what the network’s users cannot do is sharing physical artifacts or products they fancy in the real world with their digital connections. Until now …

Image: © FullSix Group / Diesel

Experience

The Italian fashion brand Diesel recently started enhancing its retail shopping experience with social media features. Visitors of its Madrid stores can now instantly express their appreciation of a denim through a red-framed plate next to it.
Pointing a smartphone, running a QR code reader, on the sign leads instantly to a simple mobile site holding the brand’s logotype, Facebook’s omnipresent like button as well as name and image of a favoured pair of jeans.

Assuming the potential customer is logged-in on Facebook with her / his mobile phone, a tap on the button publishes a prepared message on the user’s wall immediately. Headlined with the jeans’ name and store’s location the posting says “I am in Diesel’s Fuencarral store right now and like this pair of jeans …” – in Spanish, of course.

Hitting the button shares a link which neither leads to a sub-page on diesel.com nor offers any further information on the liked item. Instead of allowing friends to discover the product a click on the link surprisingly routes to Diesel’s international Facebook page which lets the whole experience appear as an awkward action to collect more fans on the social network.

Challenge

Diesel’s brand interaction starts smart, but passes up a good opportunity. What could be an analogue-digital word of mouth converter turns into the opposite and does not engage followers, but might leave annoyed and disappointed users behind. The challenge is – as always – to tell a coherent story and lead an interaction to a successful as well as meaningful conclusion for the user. In Diesel’s QR code case this means the link shared on the liker’s wall should include relevant information, so that interested people are able to discover the liked product and learn about it at length. How great would it be to find out about a jeans’ design and manufacturing process, to see other related garments etc.? Unfortunately the brand experience breaks almost at its very last step which makes it even more disappointing since it’s so easy to imagine how it could work successfully.

Goal

Although the Diesel QR code foregoes chances and looks clunky with big red signs that take over the attention of the actual product, the touchpoint connecting retail store with digital followers is powerful. This early attempt will be iterated and improved very soon probably – whether by Diesel itself or another brand. Manufacturers could make QR codes to regular ingredients of labels. Apart from the price, product number and 1d barcode such tags could deliver shareable background information about the product, its heritage, intention and purpose. A richness of content as well as social features are possible – but remain widely unused capabilities as of today.

Even though it’s not a unique brand experience with Diesel, it’s a simple and rather clever way to connect real world objects and locations to digital counterparts with complementary content. Furthermore such extentions might not only serve customers with additional information, but brands and manufacturers as well. Lively discussions on Facebook can generate qualitive feedback which might be used for the product’s next iteration and consequently improve the experience with a brand in the long run.

* – Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Advertising Sales at Facebook, at Techcrunch’s Disrupt conference [Source: simplyzesty.com]

Overview

+ connecting retail experience with brand’s digital communication offerings
+ easy to implement
+ quick & simple way for customers to digitally share a real-world discovery
! deliver additional information not only a like button behind QR code
! assistance for interested customers in installing a QR reader on phone
! observe discussions on the product in order to get feedback for iterations and improvements in the future