While watching some television I saw an ad for a new Renault car. They revived the old 4 model and they introduced this with an interesting campaign that resulted me to take pictures of my television.
While the car was driving around in a futuristic city environment, the camera zoomed out gradually revealing a QR code. A number of yellow styled buildings were situated in such a way that it represented the code. It needed a bit of time for me to realise that I could scan it… It felt like I uncovered a secret code and I wondered how many viewers had seen this and were “converted” towards the additional content that was behind this discovery.
The abstract styling of the commercial combined with an animated 3D visualisation of a city created a nice and smooth integration of the QR-code. The zoom-tilt effect of the camera slowly unveiled the code and made it look good and hid it, even though it was in plain sight. It also had an exclusive feel to it and this was emphasised when checking the linked website. With discovering this page you were allowed to join the club of R5 members (by paying € 150) and this would give you early access for buying this car.
I must admit that I needed to rewind the show I was watching because I was too late to scan the code. This makes me wonder how this will have effect on the length and content of the commercial. I noticed that over time a commercial gets a little shorter. They cut out certain scenes to reduce the length of the commercial to reduce costs. With a QR code in view, you need a minimum screen time for this code to be scanned, so there is little flexibility there.
Earlier this year Albert Heijn also used a QR code in one of their commercials. It looked less polished than the Renault implementation, but it also functioned as a link to their exclusive membership portal. Maybe the limited time the code is on the screen adds up to the exclusive experience?
The use of a QR codes isn’t new, but the way how it was visually integrated in the Renault ad was really creative. Recent Superbowl commercials showed additional interesting QR experiments. Coinbase made it all about the code and created a bouncing pong game. No logo or additional content was shown, and this created a mysterious 1-minute commercial during prime time that everyone wanted to check out. The retro-design was really effective here, and I’m very curious to see how we can push the QR code design even further.