Marks & Spencer has added two dimensional barcodes to the labels on its Food to Go range of juices, enabling customers who snap a picture of the barcode with their mobile phone to get more information on the product as well as a discount voucher they can use to save money on their next purchase.
The service was developed for M&S by mobile marketing agency Incentivated. The idea is that the 2D barcodes enable the retailer to deliver customers far more product information than it is practical to include on the label. “If you’re sitting in a park eating your sandwich, you will have your mobile with you and M&S can then use that to communicate further information to you about the product,” Incentivated’s MD Jonathan Bass told InternetRetailing.net.
And, unlike a printed label, the information can also easily be updated. “There’s a provenance story that brands want to get across and it changes over time,” Bass explained. “They can’t reprint the packaging, but they can update the information on the website.”
Incentivated’s solution, which uses Datamatrix 2D barcodes, has already been implemented by a number of brands, including Pepsi, but Marks & Spencer is the first retailer to use it in the UK.
Each of the Food to Go products involved in the service carry a ‘Scan with your Mobile’ icon on the front and a description of how to use the service on the side. And, for those who don’t have barcode scanning software on their phones, there is also the option of texting a keyword to M&S to receive the information — along with a call to action to download the software to make it easier and cheaper to use the service in the future.
