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The Guinness QR Glass

Issue 21 | December 2011

Agency

BBDO New York

Creative Team

Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars ; Creative Director/Copywriter: Adam Reeves ; Art Director/Designer: Danilo Boer ; Design Director: Craig Duffney

Production Team

Director of Creative Engineering/Production: Jd Michaels ; Digital Producers: Chad Stoller/Kristin Maverick

Other Credits

Account Team: Jim Santora/Hayley Devlin/Jamal Smith

Date

March 2011

Background

Guinness has always been a brand that inspires people to talk. About Guinness itself as well as every other topic under the sun. To encourage conversation in bars, the brewer wondered if the pint glass itself could not become a communications medium.

Idea

Guinness created the first-ever QR glass.

This is how it worked.

Printed onto the glass in white was one half of the QR code. When empty or filled with some paltry lager, it didn’t work. Fill the glass with Guinness, however, and the code wa activated, allowing people to download exclusive content, or broadcast social media messages via their pint.

The creative execution was relevant to the product in several ways: you had to order the beer to participate; it required Guinness to make the code work; and once scanned, the code distributed social media messaging about the product. The trifecta of relevance! Only Guinness could make or do this.

Results

Though done in only a small number of bars, the QR code glass was a huge success, creating thousands of social media impressions, several each time a glass is used, not to mention the word of mouth at the bars themselves.

Our Thoughts

BBDO NY is on fire. Not literally. Although, that copywriter on level 5 shouldn’t play with matches above an overflowing waste paper basket.

They have for entries in this issue of Directory, which is tough on lesser agencies struggling to get in. And while I’m no fan of QR codes (mostly because they are horribly misused, especially in Australia where no-one gives a fuck about them), this is a clever piece of product integration that would, probably, increase the usage rate of the QR code.